
Glass 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



YOUR INNER SELF 



0- 



BY 



LOUIS E. BISCH, A.B., M.D., Ph.D. 




GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1922 



■ 3& 












COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 

AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

First Edition 



OCT 13 1922 

C1A686261 







PUBLISHER'S NOTE 

The author of this book was formerly 
Associate in Educational Psychology, 
Columbia University; Organizer and 
Director of the Psychopathic Labora- 
tory, New York Police Department; 
Visiting Neurologist to the New York 
City Children's Hospitals and Schools; 
Alienist to the " Clearing House for 
Mental Defectives ,, ; Physician to the 
New York Neurological Institute; In- 
structor in Neuropathology, New York 
Post Graduate Medical School; Organ- 
izer and Director of the Mental Hy- 
giene Clinic, Norfolk, Va.; Director of 
the Psychiatric Division, 5th Naval 
District, etc., etc. 

He is at present Consulting Special- 
ist in Neuropsychiatry, U. S. Public 
Health Service Hospital No. 45, Bilt- 
more, N. C; Consulting Neurologist, 
Clarence Barker Memorial Hospital, 
Asheville, N. C; Medical Director 
Hillcrest Manor, Asheville, N. C. 



KNOW THYSELF 

(INSCRIPTION ON TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI) 



PREFACE 

Many books have been written and will continue 
to be written about the intricacies and mysteries 
of the mind. The very multiplicity and diver- 
sity of mental processes and the dominant role 
they play in determining happiness or misery, 
success or failure, indicate the interest everyone 
should feel in them. 

Out of the wealth of data, sometimes conflict- 
ing, which has been laboriously gathered by 
scientific investigators, sufficient information has 
been correlated to make at least certain mental 
reactions understandable. Theories based upon 
this attested knowledge are found to be of prac- 
tical use in everyday life. Nobody can afford to 
treat carelessly or in a scoffing spirit the trend 
of scientific thought on so vital a subject. 

The brain is the controlling sensitizer — the 
switchboard — of the entire organism, organic 
and functional. An insight into its workings 
cannot fail to be invaluable to any individual. 
The scientist is no longer satisfied with the older 
"effect psychology' which confined itself to 

ix 



x PREFACE 

observing the results merely of brain activity, 
but he looks deeper and searches for causes and 
reasons. If he can discover why a person be- 
haves in such and such a way under certain 
circumstances rather than in some other manner, 
he will in time be able to regulate the cause, i. e., 
the mental process, and wisely to direct the 
effect, i. e., the behaviour itself. We are begin- 
ning to realize that men and women, despite 
hereditary influences, are not the victims of 
fatalistic predetermination. They can in large 
measure become captains of their souls — if they 
only know how. Knowledge of the inner self 
is essential to self-mastery. 

No human being can hope to guide his own 
craft toward efficiency and happiness unless 
he is honest and plucky enough to acknowledge 
his weaknesses, and has the courage and per- 
sistence to probe his inmost thoughts and face 
what he finds there. 

A dreaded disease is betrayed to a doctor's eye 
by unmistakable symptoms. For the patient 
to deny the presence of the disease and refuse 
the regimen necessary to its cure can result only 
in a life of invalidism, shortened and suffering. 
Nor can a refusal to admit a basic fault of 
character, signs of which jump to the eye of a 



PREFACE xi 

trained observer, have other result than a life- 
long handicap, carrying imminent risk of dis- 
aster. 

Sigmund Freud, with his psychoanalytic doc- 
trines, has undoubtedly gone further in his fear- 
less search for underlying, motivating, and 
causative factors in human characterology than 
any of his predecessors. Whether we accept 
the conclusions of the psychoanalytic school in 
their entirety or not, any unprejudiced student 
of normal and abnormal psychology must admit 
that a new avenue of approach has been blazed, 
and that many mental reactions, hitherto un- 
explainable, have received a possible and often 
probable interpretation. 

And if one is engaged in actually applying 
these theories in trying to help those who are 
mentally harassed — not the insane, mind you, 
but those, of whom there are thousands, who 
suffer from fears, obsessions, depression, morbid 
self-depreciation, insomnia, deficient concen- 
tration, poor memory, lack of self-confidence, 
and what-not, and who face the treadmill 
drudgery of life with misgivings and despair — 
the hopeful results rouse even greater enthusi- 
asm. No one can undergo a psychoanalysis — 
or even study its principles — without emerging a 



xii PREFACE 

stronger and happier person from the mental 
house-cleaning and setting in order. If psycho- 
analysis is anything at all it is a character- 
builder. 

Most of us go through life haphazardly, with 
no clear plan and with no higher ideal of action 
than that we have been put here and must make 
the best we can of it. But how much more we 
could make of ourselves if we understood better 
the impelling forces within us which, wisely 
controlled and directed, make for supreme suc- 
cess and happiness but, if misunderstood, cause 
miserable failure and unhappiness. 

In treating so obscure a subject as the mind, 
the writer hesitates to use arbitrary statement, 
yet his voice must sound a clear note of authority 
or he will be denied a hearing. It is understood, 
therefore, that he will present only carefully 
attested hypotheses which have already supplied 
the solution to many difficult problems and that 
in marshalling his evidence he will avoid an 
obscuring excess of detail. His aim is to pro- 
mote interest in this subject, a knowledge of 
which he regards as so practically helpful, and to 
stimulate an appetite for a wider knowledge 
than can be condensed within the limits of so 
brief a handbook. 



PREFACE xiii 

Although the science of psychoanalysis has 
hundreds of books and articles to its credit, and 
a tendency to popularize the subject is greatly 
in evidence at the present time, perhaps a some- 
what different angle of approach to this highly 
complex subject may prove acceptable. 

The author is particularly indebted to Miss 
Edith Child for constructive criticism of the 
manuscript as well as for compiling the index 
and selecting the terms to be included in the 
glossary. For stimulating interest, appreciative 
acknowledgment is due to Mrs. Sara Lindsey 
Porter and Mr. James Hay, Jr. 

Louis E. Bisch. 

Hillcrest Manor, 
Asheville, N. C, 
March io, 1922. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Publisher's Note v 

Preface ix 

• 

Introduction xix 

Chapter I 

The Inner Self I 

The Unconscious or Subconscious. 

Chapter II 

The Urge of Desire 9 

The Libido : Nutrition — Self-Preservation — Repro- 
ductive — Ego — Individual Differences. 

Chapter III 

The Span of Life 22 

Five Periods of Development: Infantile Period — 
Period of Over-Idealization of Parents — Period of 
Criticism of Parents — Adolescent Period — Adult 
Period. 

XV 



xvi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter IV 

Early Helps and Hindrances 3$ 

Fixations — The GEdipus and Electra Myths. 

Chapter V 

The Conflict of Life 46 

The World of Reality — The Pleasure-Pain Principle — 
Repressions. 

Chapter VI 

Unconscious Mechanisms $6 

Complexes — The Psychic Censor — Introversion and 
Extroversion — Regressions — Sadism and Masochism 
— Ambivalence. 

Chapter VII 

Safety Devices ......... 68 

Defense Reactions — Organ Inferiority — Conversion — 
Dreams — Sublimation. 

Chapter VIII 

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of . . 81 
Historical Discussion — The Unfulfilled Wish — Value 
of the Dream — Childhood Dreams — Adult Dreams — 
Underlying and Precipitating Causes — Dream Sym- 
bols — Manifest and Latent Contents. 



CONTENTS xvii 

PAGE 

Chapter IX 

Investigating the Inner Self .... 96 
The Dream- Work — Condensation — Displacement — 
Dramatization — Association Method — Resistances — 
Reaction Time — Analysis of Sample Dreams. 

Chapter X 

Sex Development . .114 

Erogenous Zones — Heterosexuality — Homosexuality 
• — Auto-Eroticism — Narcism — Sex Hygiene. 

Chapter XI 

Nervous Breakdowns ....... 128 

Definitions — Ordinary Nervousness — Sex Factor in 
Neuroses — Phobias — Anxiety Neuroses — Compulsion 
Neuroses — Hysteria — Neurasthenia — Psychasthenia. 

Chapter XII 

What Is Insanity? 145 

Definitions; Differentials between Neuroses and 
Psychoses; Dementia Praecox; Mental Hygiene. 

Chapter XIII 

Curiosities of Everyday Life .... 156 
Losing Things — Forgetting Names and Duties — 
Slips of the Tongue — Mistakes in Reading and Writ- 



xviii CONTENTS 

ing — Unintentional Actions — Mental Telepathy — 
Superstitions — Wit and Humour — Method of Investi- 
gation. 

PAGE 

Chapter XI V 

The Inner Self and the Arts . . . . 169 
Ancient Folk-Lore — Primitive Religions — Imitative 
and Creative Art — Art as a Normal Compensation — 
Sublimation — Genius. 

Chapter XV 

Conclusion . 178 

Suggested Reading 182 

Glossary ............ 185 

Index . . n "V \ . 191 



** 






INTRODUCTION 

Just as the dissection of the human body is 
essential to an understanding of its structure, 
just as the development of an antiseptic, and 
later of an aseptic technique for surgery was 
essential before many disease processes could be 
attacked at their seat, just so psychoanalysis is 
the essential method for uncovering and for 
dealing with the disorders of the human mind. 
But in the same way that the dissection of the 
human body and the application of the sur- 
geon's knife had to win their way to public ap- 
proval before they could be widely used for good 
in the understanding of the human body and in 
the treatment of illness, so has psychoanalysis 
to win its way to public approval before it will 
receive that general support which is necessary 
as a background — before it can attain the far- 
reaching results for which it is adapted and which 
are possible by its use. One of the most im- 
portant ways by which this new method of 
psychology can come to popular recognition, 
understanding, and acceptance is by reducing its 

six 



xx INTRODUCTION 

highly scientific and complex conceptions to 
simple, understandable English, supported by 
concrete and apt illustrations from actual ex- 
perience. This method of popularizing has al- 
ready been attempted by many, and many more 
will follow. One must be satisfied to be a worker 
among workers in such a field, and to contribute 
his bit along with others. Nevertheless, each 
contribution bears the distinctive stamp of 
the personality of the contributor, both in the 
selection of the material and in the way of pres- 
entation, and therefore becomes to that extent 
an original contribution. This little book is such 
an original contribution by the author, Dr. Bisch. 
It is interestingly written in a style that is both 
entertaining and vigorous, and at the same time 
sufficiently condensed so that it may well secure 
a wide reading. 

The understanding of the human mind and of 
the nature of mental disease has come to the fore 
in the past decade with surprising rapidity, and 
it is probably not without significance that such 
a stimulated interest should arise at a moment 
in the world's history when events, which are 
succeeding each other with startling rapidity, are 
obviously in their nature psychological, and 
when the dangers which society has to face are 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

equally obviously of psychological origin. Every 
contribution to popular literature, therefore, 
which helps in the direction of sane thinking 
is a distinct asset and should be welcomed by all 
who are striving for the best solution of the many 
complicated social problems that now confront 
us. The students of mental disease are in a 
peculiarly advantageous relation to all these 
various problems, and it is well that they should 
speak forth their thoughts as the author has done 
in this book regarding "Your Inner Self." 

William A. White. 



YOUR INNER SELF 



YOUR INNER SELF 

Chapter I 
THE INNER SELF 

The Unconscious or Subconscious 

You are what you are to-day because of every- 
thing you have been from the cradle up to the 
present time. 

Thus we summarize the innumerable factors 
that in their effects combine to produce the 
character and personality of the human adult. 
From the moment of birth — nay, even in the 
mother's womb according to some scientists — 
every thought, feeling, and experience has a 
bearing upon mental development. Character 
and personality are like composites, gradually 
built up; or better still, like a component of 
forces constantly changing in an infinite variety 
of ways with no single factor too insignificant to 
produce perhaps an indelible impression. 

An experience occurring to a child of five may 



2 YOUR INNER SELF 

have a direct bearing upon its whole future life. 
A fright, an unexpected discovery, a love interest 
during these tender years may be responsible 
for making or marring an entire career. The 
shame of undeserved punishment may burn into 
a child's brain and its scar never be effaced. 
A dread of closed places ("claustrophobia"), 
because of which a woman dared not enter an 
elevator, street car, theatre, or, at times, even 
her own room, was traceable directly to a shock 
received at the age of eight when in a game of 
"hide and seek" a playmate forgot to unlock 
a closet in which she had been hidden. 

Such experiences are often forgotten — in fact, 
usually are. It does not follow that the more 
important an experience is the more likely it is to 
be remembered. A factor that determined the 
failure of a whole lifetime was lost to memory soon 
after it happened, although its influence was felt 
indirectly through other channels. The woman 
mentioned above had completely forgotten the 
accidental carelessness of her playmate. 

This leads to the interesting conclusion that 
we do not possess simply one mind but, in effect, 
really two. We have an unconscious or subcon- 
scious as well as a conscious mind. 

Such a classification may seem arbitrary, and 



THE INNER SELF 3 

in a sense it is, yet it helps us to understand the 
curious manifestations of mentality. 

Like a diamond, the cut surface of which is an 
inseparable part of the stone mass and the stone 
mass an inseparable part of its cut surface, so 
stands the relationship between the conscious 
and the unconscious. The facets of the diamond 
have no thickness, they are just the top. Pene- 
trate them for ever so small a fraction of an inch 
and you immediately have left the surface and 
are within the stone mass underneath. The 
latter, in turn, derives its value and brilliancy 
from the cut surface. One is absolutely and in- 
separably dependent upon the other. 

Consciousness is the medium through which 
we receive impressions from the outside world. 
By means of our sense organs — eyes, ears, nose, 
mouth, skin — we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. 
All these mental images of sight, hearing, smell, 
taste, and touch linger in consciousness only for 
the briefest period. Often with astonishing 
rapidity they are submerged into the underneath, 
the unconscious, in order to be put away and 
stored up for future use. The reason con- 
sciousness holds them only for a short time is 
that room must be cleared as quickly as possible 
for new impressions. 



4 YOUR INNER SELF 

I examined a patient who complained that her 
thoughts passed to and fro, recurring with mad- 
dening repetition. She couldn't thrust ideas 
away. New impressions thronging from the 
outside world bewildered her. She no longer 
could think clearly. Her mind was all in a 
hodge-podge. In her case consciousness had 
lost the power of submerging ideas quickly. 
This woman was developing a mental disease. 

The conscious mind is the intermediary be- 
tween the unconscious and the world about us. 
We pass a friend in the street; we greet him. We 
proceed on our way looking at the shop windows, 
occupied with other thoughts. At night, in 
conversation at dinner, we recall the meeting of 
the afternoon and describe it. Having during 
the interval, for purposes of convenience, stored 
away the visual image of our friend in the fore- 
conscious,* we are able at will to recall it in mi- 
nutest detail. 

Although the unconscious is actually a store- 
house for all our experiences we cannot always 
lay our hands on them when we want to. 

Again, we may have difficulty in banishing a 

*The term , foreconscious, is used by Dr. William A. White and others to 
indicate that part of the unconscious which is just outside the focus of attention. 
Things there, which later may for one reason or another be more deeply sub- 
merged, are for a time readily recallable. 



THE INNER SELF 5 

thought, or as we say, forgetting it. This hap- 
pens when some strong disagreeable emotion is 
attached to the conscious impression. 

For example, suppose the man we met has for- 
feited our friendship by betraying our confidence. 
Not only shall we have an unpleasant . feeling 
while passing him, but his image and the pain- 
ful associations it recalls will keep bobbing up 
again and again into consciousness, and very 
likely form a continuous undertone to other 
thoughts, until the pressure is relieved by ven- 
tilating the whole incident through the talk at 
dinner time. 

Further, in this underneath mind — in this 
your real inner self — there is an orderly arrange- 
ment of what is stored away. 

Science has already discovered that to certain 
portions of the brain is given the task of storing 
up certain kinds of impressions; they have a 
specialized work to perform. In the back of the 
head, in the occipital lobes, are the centres for 
sight. The speech centre is supposed to be on 
the left side of the brain, above and in front of 
the ear. Future experimentation will doubtless 
determine in much greater detail this localization 
of function. It may be added here that most of 
the work of the brain seems to be taken up by 



6 YOUR INNER SELF 

the left side, the right being, relatively speaking, 
dormant. 

The unconscious has well been called one's 
historical past. The multitudinous events of 
each day, but especially its landmarks, are all 
recorded there. 

You will ask whether every experience, im- 
portant or not, is actually engraved somewhere 
in the unconscious and is never effaced. Do not 
some impressions gradually fade out? Is there 
no such thing as absolute forgetting? 

All mental images may conveniently be divided 
into two types, the purely intellectual and those 
to which some emotion is attached. The aver- 
age thinker, pondering the obscurity of Ein- 
stein's Law of Relativity, may be exerting the 
highest intellectual effort of which he is capable, 
but the subject is so abstract and impersonal 
that it arouses in him no emotion whatever. 
An impression of this intellectual type, when 
relegated to the unconscious mind, tends to fade 
out because it lacks the vitalizing element, 
emotion. To Einstein himself, however, all 
thought on this great law which he has formu- 
lated, is doubtless surcharged with intense emo- 
tion. 

If, on the other hand, we contemplate even 



THE INNER SELF 7 

abstractly mother-love, a thrill within us marks 
the stirring of emotion. If furthermore this 
thought is transferred from the abstract to the 
concrete and attached to some woman, the thrill 
strengthens, the impression made on the un- 
conscious is deepened — the record will be per- 
manent. 

The mind, in its infinite variety, is indeed a 
complicated mechanism. Yet it is a machine 
like any other organ of the body, and its work- 
ings can be studied. 

The brain is the solid substance or material 
of that machine. It is made up of various parts 
called nerve cells and nerve fibres. The function- 
ing or working of these nerve cells produces 
thoughts. All the thoughts considered together 
and bound together into a system constitute 
the mind. 

All other organs of the body are machines 
also and each organ has a definite work to per- 
form. Just as the brain cells manufacture 
thoughts so do the liver cells manufacture bile 
and store up sugar in the form of glucose. 

When all the liver cells are doing their work 
properly you are pleasantly unaware of their 
action. When certain of these cells begin to 
secrete too little and get out of kilter in some way 



8 YOUR INNER SELF 

with the rest of the liver, then this organ gets sick 
and perhaps for the first time you appreciate the 
fact that you have a liver. 

This is the essence of all disease, a disharmony 
or wrong functioning of the parts of an organ or its 
disharmony as a whole with the rest of the body. 

What has been said is true also of the mind. 
When the mind functions well, when the con- 
scious and the unconscious are working in har- 
mony, there is a sense of well-being, a feeling of 
being properly and intimately attuned with na- 
ture and the world in which we live. 

If our two minds are not cooperating, if the 
inner, unconscious self is in disharmony with 
the outer, conscious self, well-being disappears 
and in its stead come uneasiness, worry, and 
depression. 

It is the inner self that we must study, that 
vast, complicated storehouse that has made us 
whaft we are. Let us enter and examine its con- 
tents. Perhaps our mental commodities are 
not labelled correctly, perhaps they have been 
shelved wrongly or have been mislaid. If we 
enter fearlessly, ready and willing to face facts 
as they are without cavil or prejudice, we are 
certain to profit by the experience if, indeed, we 
do not actually set our mental houses in order. 



Chapter II 

THE URGE OF DESIRE 

The Libido: Nutrition — Self-preser- 
vation — Reproductive — Ego — Individual 
Differences 

Everyone has within him a something that 
keeps him going despite adversity. You may 
or you may not realize the existence of this hope- 
ful, driving power within. Whether you do or 
not, it is there just the same exerting its influence 
upon your thoughts and actions constantly. * 

Suppose you are a man in business and have 
had a poor season. The outlook is gloomy; 
money is tight. Your creditors, like a wolf-pack, 
are closing around you. Bankruptcy looms 
dangerously near. Is it surprising that you are 
full of forebodings, depressed, and heart-sick? 

As you contemplate the ruin and disgrace 
threatening, do you immediately rush to the 
bureau drawer for your revolver? On the con- 
trary, self-destruction is by no means your 

9 



io YOUR INNER SELF 

first thought. You review the situation, you 
cast balances, you weigh and consider all possible 
ways of getting out of the morass of your diffi- 
culties. Now and again a ray of hope makes 
itself felt. Business may take an unexpected 
turn for the better. Your largest creditor is 
friendly; he will give you breathing time. In 
the face of despair you still hope on. 

Suppose you are a woman, the mother of a sick 
child you idolize. Suppose, further, that it is 
your only child and, to make the picture even 
sadder, suppose your husband is dead. The 
physician has told you that the little one has 
barely a fighting chance. Should he die you 
feel that the mother-love within you would 
perish likewise. You would just as soon be bur- 
ied alive as have such a catastrophe overwhelm 
you. 

Do you, in turn, prepare for suicide should 
the apparently inevitable occur? Again, no! 
Instead, you make diligent and even frantic 
search for any ground of reassurance. You trace 
back the child's heredity — strong stock on both 
sides. You appeal to your friends for their 
opinions of your child's chance of recovery and 
treasure any crumb of comfort they offer. You 
send up heart-broken prayers to God to save your 



THE URGE OF DESIRE n 

heart's idol. You stumble upon the thought 
that the doctor may be wrong. Are not doctors 
human and may they not often be mistaken? 
A mall, inner voice whispers that your only 
child simply cannot die. From some unknown 
source you have gained courage to struggle on 
and face the issue. 

How vital to human beings is their instinctive 
resistance to the paralyzing grip of despair! 
The average man and woman will fight to the 
last ditch before relinquishing hope. 

The nervous system is the toughest element 
in the whole human machinery. It will endure 
untold abuses before breaking down. It is 
questionable whether any other organ can with- 
stand what the brain can, and for so long. 

But anxiety is not the only thing that will wear 
the nervous system down. 

Men, and women, too, will slave all day at 
business and then slave most of the night in 
social ways. They have an idea that speeding 
up their pleasures is an antidote to their daily 
toil. The devotees of bridge regard it as a won- 
derful recreation. So it is in small doses, but no 
game demanding mental effort, however slight, 
can have any other effect than a dangerous 
depletion of nervous energy when practised for 



12 YOUR INNER SELF 

hours at a stretch at the expense of outdoor rec- 
reation and sleep. 

Eight hours for work, eight hours for play, and 
eight hours for sleep is as true a maxim now as it 
ever was. If it might be modified in any way the 
eight hours of sleep might profitably be increased 
to nine or even ten. 

It is absurd to argue that fatigue from hard 
mental work should be counteracted by hard 
physical exercise. Mild exercise in the open is 
excellent in such cases: a short brisk walk, a not 
too strenuous game of tennis, or a dozen holes of 
golf. Playing tennis too long and too violently 
or spending an entire day at golf ceases to 
activate the muscles in carrying off waste prod- 
ucts and simply adds to the wear and tear of the 
entire organism. 

Tough as the brain and nervous system are, 
they have their limitations. With continued 
abuse the offender sooner or later "pays the 
piper." Furthermore^ exercise and diversion 
are not sufficient to restore shattered nerves. 

This inner, propelling force that holds us to the 
task of living is unconscious; we scarcely realize 
its existence. The psychoanalytic term for this 
forward-looking element of our inner selves is the 
Libido. 



THE URGE OF DESIRE 13 

No person is free from libido; everybody pos- 
sesses it. We are born with it; it is instinctive. 

We can no more deny our libidinous energy 
than we can deny that we live. It is life itself. 
It pervades all our thoughts, actions, and feel- 
ings. It is the animating spirit of everything. 
Without it we should lead a merely vegetative 
existence. 

Libido is the desire of life, the wishing of life, 
the pleasure-seeking of life. We have heard of 
the "will to power.' 3 This is the will to life. 

Hope, desire, urge, wishing, striving, ambition 
— all are synonymous with libido. 

Although there are a great variety of ten- 
dencies that may properly be classed as libidi- 
nous, psychologists generally recognize four main 
divisions. The first is the Nutrition Libido, the 
second the S elf-Preservation Libido, the third the 
Reproductive, and the fourth the Ego Libido, or 
Personality. 

The first three of these ensure the well-being 
and continuance of the race. 

The Nutrition Libido is the most elemental of 
the four. 

A baby's first wail is a hunger cry; its first 
instinctive movement is a groping for the moth- 
er's breast. Were this not so, the human race 



# 1 



i 4 YOUR INNER SELF 

would perish speedily. To feed and sleep and 
rouse to feed again, rounds out the first months 
of a baby's life. Other pleasures such as play 
come later. Throughout life the nutrition libido 
is a primary need. The satisfaction of hunger 
should always be attended by a sensation of 
pleasure. The glutton displays an over-strong 
nutrition libido that has never been refined; that 
of the epicure is over-refined. 

The nutrition libido is insistent; its demands, 
through force of habit, periodic. Having re- 
solved to achieve slimness by fasting, or to 
proclaim resistance to injustice by a hunger- 
strike, you may deny its urge for even a suc- 
cession of meals. But the libido will win out in 
the end. You must yield to its demands or 
starve to death. 

This quality of an inexorable demand upon 
consciousness is a salient characteristic of all 
types of libidinous energy. Libidinous demands 
must be satisfied in some sort of fashion, else 
peace of mind is shattered and the physical well- 
being of the whole body suffers. 

The Libido of Self -Preservation is instinctive in 
its action. 

Absorbed in a brown study, you start to cross 
a crowded street. An automobile bears down 



THE URGE OF DESIRE 15 

upon you. Without conscious thought on your 
part, your muscles are set in action. You has- 
tily draw back. The action which saved you was 
automatic and instinctive. The libido of self- 
preservation was alert. 

Should you be walking in a park and meet a 
lion escaped from the zoo, dignity and the shining 
polish of your patent leathers would be forgot- 
ten. You would make for the nearest available 
tree shouting lustily for help. Your self-pres- 
ervation libido has set your propulsive muscles 
agoing with lightning rapidity. Whether you 
ran because you were afraid, or were afraid — as 
William James, the psychologist, states — because 
you ran, the end is the same. The conscious 
process of running away marks the instinctive 
action of your libido. 

Some analysts rank the libido of self-preserva- 
tion as above all others in importance. In the 
lower forms of life it is the chief law of existence. 
In man and the higher animals we have the in- 
fluence of family love. The male will protect his 
mate with his own body; parents will feed and 
defend their young at the cost to themselves of 
self-denial and bodily hurt. 

Later, man gradually learned the wisdom of 
giving a square deal to his fellow man because 



16 YOUR INNER SELF 

thereby he would secure for himself a square 
deal in return. Self-interest is still, you see, 
the ruling motive, but man has learned to pro- 
ject his self-preservation libido on to another, 
to put himself into another's place. Altruism 
has been born ! 

It is from such humble beginnings that, as eons 
passed, the noblest abstract libidinous qualities 
have been developed: mercy, charity, justice, and 
many others. 

The cynic and the materialist would attribute 
all such idealistic traits to a self-interest mo- 
tive. An eye so jaundiced might as well refuse 
to admit the stainless purity of the water-lily 
because of the slime in which its roots are em- 
bedded. 

The person who makes the best of his life and 
who is of the greatest value to society is the 
one who is best adjusted. His keener sense of 
proportion enables him to gratify his own striv- 
ings without infringing the needs and rights of 
others. 

When we come to the question of reproduction 
we are at once treading upon dangerous ground. 
It is dangerous because it is so readily and often 
misunderstood. 

Reproductive Libido does not mean and was 



THE URGE OF DESIRE 17 

never intended to mean merely the gratification 
of sex. 

Sex is necessarily included in the concept of 
reproduction, but, considered in its grossly 
sensual aspects, sex plays but a small part in 
the broader, wider, idealized sense in which the 
term " reproduction' is employed by analysts. 

Can anything be more beautiful and uplifting 
than reproduction of the species? Does not the 
continuum of a child growing to adulthood and 
bearing a child, and so on for generation after 
generation, come as close to an earthly im- 
mortality as anything conceivable? 

Reproductive libido is really love-life. It 
includes not only the love one bears another of 
the opposite sex but it includes as well a love for 
all growing things — flowers, plants, trees, ani- 
mals — all manifestations of nature that move in 
cycles, that mature, decay, and are renewed by 
birth. 

Persons with a strong reproductive nature do 
not necessarily want a dozen children. They 
may be childless but they glory in the forces of 
nature about them, and feel attuned to and in 
harmony with nature. 

Of the urge of reproduction is born the 
creative desire. To reproduce is to build over 



1 8 YOUR INNER SELF 

again, to modify, to add something new — in 
short, to invent. Painting a picture, writing 
a book, carving a statue, and even building a 
house or establishing a big business — all are 
among the various manifestations of repro- 
ductive libido. 

The big, actively doing men and women in 
the world are those with the strongest repro- 
ductive libidoes. 

Women feel the call of the reproductive libido 
in its narrow sense more forcibly than men. 
Maternity seems more insistent for expression 
than paternity. Because of the polygamous 
tendencies of all males, especially lower animal 
forms, sex desire has usurped to a varying but 
considerable degree the sum total of libidinous 
reproductive energy in the male at the expense 
of fatherhood. Still another cause that aids this 
result is the fact that man's greater freedom of 
activity has given him more opportunities than 
to the average woman for creative pursuits, all of 
which are substitutes for the gratification of per- 
petuating the race. 

Reproductive libido cannot be denied. If it 
cannot be fulfilled in procreation, it demands a 
substitute outlet. 

Suppose a woman refuses marriage because 



THE URGE OF DESIRE 19 

she has made a solemn vow always to care for 
her parents while they live. Suppose, further, 
that when finally she is free to marry, her child- 
bearing period is over, or that offers of marriage 
are not forthcoming. What has become of her 
reproductive libido all this time? It is probably 
knocking at the door of consciousness for recog- 
nition as strong as ever, and not unlikely has been 
responsible for the dissatisfaction, restlessness, 
and vague yearnings that have harassed her for 
years. It being too late for actual fulfilment, 
what is she to do? Such women adopt children, 
teach children, or devote their lives to something 
that carries the symbols of motherhood with it. 

Ego Libido really means Personality. 

It is the instinctive urge or desire to be well 
thought of, to be acceptable to fellow men, and 
possibly to tower above them in some way. 
Ego should not be interpreted as meaning con- 
ceit. The latter is an exalted opinion of oneself 
without adequate reason. Ego is self-respect. 

We should realize our strength as well as our 
weaknesses, our good qualities as well as our bad 
ones. So many of us are eager enough to knock 
the other fellow, but how few of us remember 
to give praise! Well-justified praise never de- 
velops conceit. Unjustified praise may. 



20 YOUR INNER SELF 

Away back in antiquity materialism held full 
sway and it was every man for himself. As 
civilization advanced, as in the herding stage > 
individuals learned that it paid to live together 
in tribes and clans. Cattle had to be protected, 
and this was too big a job for any one man* 
Therefore there developed a division of labour, 
one specializing as a herder, another as a hunter, 
and still another as a fighter. The advantages 
of give and take became apparent. 

With community interest the desire to excel 
followed naturally. The men were spurred on 
to excel in strength or prowess, the women to lead 
in child-rearing and home-making. The women 
who were superior mated with the more desirable 
males. These gradually acquired more property 
rights and their authority became more pro- 
nounced. Thus the ego libido came into being. 

Personality is synonymous with ego. One is 
not born with personality, only with the po- 
tentials or possibilities of its development. 
Conscious recognition of the ego libido is the fore- 
runner of its unfolding. 

It may be added that although all individuals 
are alike in certain ways, each in turn differs from 
every other in other particulars. We speak of 
these variations as Individual Differences. Even 



THE URGE OF DESIRE 21 

twins are not absolutely identical in character 
make-up. 

One person differs from another also in the 
amount and the dynamic force of libidinous 
energy. Although all persons have a repro- 
ductive libido, not all have it to the same degree. 
Among women, and one naturally expects 
women to possess this urge strongly, there are 
those who care nothing for matrimony or a 
family and who nevertheless appear adjusted and 
happy without revealing any traits that would 
seem to be reproductive libido substitutes. 

Many of the things which have been set down 
about libidinous energy are self-evident. This 
is the best argument that analytical psychology 
is true and effective. 

Nevertheless, the obvious is too often over- 
looked. In psychoanalysis nothing is too ob- 
vious or too insignificant for recognition. With 
such a system the workings of the mind become 
understandable and directive. 



Chapter III 

THE SPAN OF LIFE 

Five Periods of Development: Infantile 
Period — Period of Over-Idealization of Par- 
ents — Period of Criticism of Parents — 
Adolescent Period — Adult Period 

Life is a continuous process and the mind 
gradually unfolds itself from birth on. Through 
vital forces that steadily evolve, the infant in 
arms passes into childhood years and finally into 
adulthood. Between one step and the succeed- 
ing one no sharp line of demarcation can be 
drawn. 

It is convenient, however, to distinguish five 
periods of development. In each stage the 
individual shows fairly definite traits, all with a 
bearing upon later life. 

The Infantile Period begins the life of the child 
outside the mother's womb. It is a most 
auspicious time, not only for the mother, but for 
the child as well. It lasts about five years. It 
is the first stage of development and actually 

22 



THE SPAN OF LIFE 23 

surpasses all other subsequent stages in funda- 
mental importance. 

Have you ever stopped to consider that the 
newly born infant is, comparatively speaking, the 
most stupid animal brought into existence? 
This leaves out of account the tremendous possi- 
bilities for later development in which the 
young of the human species towers far above the 
rest of the animal kingdom and thus truly earns 
for itself the awe-inspiring title of homo sapiens. 
A puppy, a colt, or a chick is able to shift for 
itself in a relatively short time, whereas a baby 
requires years of care and training before it can 
cut its mother's apron strings and face the world 
unprotected and unaided. 

Unless an infant is fed, clothed, and kept clean 
it will perish. Every want must be attended to 
wisely and untiringly. There is nothing hap- 
hazard or experimental in rearing an infant. To 
do so properly is a most difficult and painstaking 
undertaking. 

The woman with a strong reproductive libido 
takes to child-bearing and child-training natu- 
rally and joyously. It is a direct expression of 
her inner yearnings. Those who try to evade 
maternity and to shirk its responsibilities either 
have a weak reproductive libido, or there are 



24 YOUR INNER SELF 

psychological factors which have interfered and 
which should be studied and corrected. 

Admittedly, then, a child is the most stupid 
of little animals, yet this initial stupidity is a 
protective trait of highest importance. 

Just because the infant is so helpless and 
dependent, it is bound to accept submissively 
the teaching and training that its elders force 
upon it. In this way the civilization of gener- 
ations that have gone before is handed down to 
the child in tabloid and, as it were, pre-digested 
form. If the sum total of knowledge, amassed 
by preceding generations — each in turn adding 
its quota of experience — had to be puzzled out 
afresh by every child through personal, and often 
bitter, experimentation, intellectual develop- 
ment and racial progress would advance at a 
snail's pace. The child is the heir of the ages! 

Biologists have presented convincing evidence 
that the child, as it develops from the embryo at 
conception, passes through stages of physical 
growth which reenact in quick succession periods 
of development of animal life from the very 
beginnings. The foetus at one period of its 
uterine development shows gill slits like those of 
fishes. The pineal gland in the brain is the 
remains of a former third eye. The appendix, 



THE SPAN OF LIFE' 25 

although a functionless organ in man, in the 
rabbit is about eight inches long and is essential 
for digestion. There are other examples of left- 
over organs of lower species. 

This development of the individual is called 
ontogenetic. The developmental history of a race 
is called phylogenetic. It is stated as a biological 
axiom that ontogenetic development repeats 
phylogenetic. More simply worded, it took hun- 
dreds of thousands of years to perfect the 
human being, and even to-day we find that its 
primitive development entails its passing 
through stages of progress characteristic of a 
whole species of the lower forms of animal life. 

Another proof of this can be found in certain 
cases of feeble-mindedness. A condition known 
as Mongolism, for instance, is thought to be 
caused by an arrest of development of the foetus, 
due to certain exhaustion factors in the mothers 
womb. All such feeble-minded children look 
alike. Their stubby, flat noses, short squat 
hands, and grimacing, imitating ways suggest 
the ape. 

In the same way that the infant before birth 
shows physical similarity to lower animal forms, 
so also is its mind at first simple and crude. 
Wholly self-centred, it interprets all pleasures in 



26 YOUR INNER SELF 

terms of bodily sensation. It accepts greedily all 
that is offered. It is above all pleasure-seeking 
and pleasure-loving. 

Warm food (milk) and soft, swaddling clothing 
give it a sense of well-being. Caresses and 
softly modulated words of endearment soothe it. 
The child's eyes sparkle with delight and it coos 
from sheer pleasure. 

The child remains for months unconcerned as 
to the question whence these pleasures come. 
For a long time it is simply a bundle of sen- 
sations, purely physical — or, if you will, animal— 
in nature. 

Later, curiosity, a primary instinct, spurs the 
child to think, investigate, and to repeat its 
various pleasure feelings whenever possible. It 
dawns upon the child's consciousness that cer- 
tain dimly differentiated figures in its tiny 
cosmos are its masters, able to impose their will 
upon it, for pleasure or for discomfort. In order 
to obtain the maximum of the pleasurable or the 
minimum of unpleasant friction, the child is 
led to a ready compliance with the will of the 
ruling powers. Selfishness is still the dominant 
motive. Obedience through love has not yet 
appeared. 

In this hold which the parents have upon their 



THE SPAN OF LIFE 27 

offspring, in this subjection which the child 
must accept whether or no, lies the secret of the 
tremendous importance of the infantile period. 

The first five years of life are determining the 
trend for all the years that follow. The tiny 
feet may easily be set upon the wrong road. 
The task of moulding the plastic mind of the 
infant is one on which parents should enter 
thoughtfully and with preparation. 

I recall a cultured and refined gentleman who 
complained of his inordinate desire to destroy 
life — to kill. An ardent hunter in his day, 
he had always delighted in shooting small birds 
as well as big game. He confessed, and shame- 
facedly at that, to having experienced often a 
thrill of delight when dispatching a wounded 
animal with his hunting knife or twisting the 
neck of a palpitating robin. 

"I'm glad I have kidney disease," he said, 
'because it prevents my hunting. Otherwise 
I'm sure I'd go right on killing. I sicken at the 
thought of the innocent animals I have slaugh- 
tered." 

A mental analysis brought to light the fact 
that the nurse employed by his parents during 
his third and fourth years not only encouraged 
the child to catch insects, beetles, and cater- 



28 YOUR INNER SELF 

pillars, on the ground that they were "nasty," 
but also taught the little fellow to stamp out 
their lives with his foot. 

Hereditary influences play a part, but it is 
environment during the first years that makes 
the most lasting impression. Even a faulty 
heredity can be largely modified, if not entirely 
overcome, by proper training. 

As the child advances and begins to realize the 
source from which its pleasures are derived, it 
responds with grateful appreciation and admi- 
ration. This ushers in the Period of Over-Ideal- 
ization of Parents. 

Lacking standards of comparison, the tot of 
five or six endows his mother and father with 
omnipotence. In later years, during adoles- 
cence, another sort of hero-worship appears, but 
in this the object of adoration and imitation is 
usually an older person of the same or opposite 
sex, or even a story-book character. 

In children between five and eight this over- 
idealization often reveals itself in their play. 
The little girl's biggest and most beautiful doll 
typifies her mother; the general at the head of 
the column of toy soldiers is identified in the 
boy's mind with his father. Children, at this 
stage of their development, also boast to each 



THE SPAN OF LIFE 29 

other of their parents' powers. "My father can 
lick your father" is a familiar boast. 

Whole-hearted as this admiration is, broaden- 
ing experience gives new standards. Before 
long they are dispassionately comparing their 
own parents with those of other children. This 
is the Period of Criticism of Parents. 

Johnny Jones idolizes his policeman father 
and till now has felt honest pride in the family 
Ford. But up the street lives Willie Smith, and 
Willie's father has recently bought a Packard. 
Willie's taunt, "Flivvers ain't no class; we've 
got a Packard," finds a weak place in Johnny's 
armour. He may snap back that "anyhow his 
Dad is a cop and wears brass buttons and can 
lick the stuffing out of any old lawyer," yet he 
realizes that Packards cost more than Fords, and 
for the life of him he cannot see why his father 
doesn't buy one. 

Johnny's shaft, too, has gone home. Willie is 
quite unable to understand why his father has 
chosen so drab a profession as the law, when 
other glittering walks of life are open to him. 

Both children are troubled. The prestige of 
their respective fathers is tarnished; their in- 
fluence subtly undermined. These idols are be- 
ginning to totter on their pedestals. 



30 YOUR INNER SELF 

It is during this carping stage that children 
often put embarrassing questions — preferably 
before strangers — and give "back talk." They 
learn a new fact at school and come home primed 
to trip their parents into a confession of igno- 
rance. 

But all these annoyances which parents have 
to put up with are healthy signs. The child is 
beginning to stand on his own feet, to develop an 
independence of thought which in later years will 
blossom forth as an ability to face the world 
alone. 

This critical spirit is a sign of mental activity, 
and by no means betrays a lack of affection. On 
the contrary, it indicates an unconscious desire 
on the child's part to prove its idol flawless. 

The period of criticism lasts until about the 
twelfth year. It is followed by the Adolescent 
Period. 

Adolescence is the great viaduct which joins 
the tender years and adulthood. It is a dis- 
tinctly formative, confused, and topsy-turvy 
stage of development. Its psychological charac- 
teristics are unlimited in variety. An entire 
book could easily be written concerning its 
vagaries and contradictions. 

The outstanding features of the adolescent 



THE SPAN OF LIFE 31 

period are emotional stress and strain. The sex 
apparatus has now matured and sex thoughts 
crowd the mind. Some callow youngsters enjoy 
these new sensations and the interest in the 
opposite sex which they evoke, while others, 
still under the spell of parental devotion, worry 
over them, fear them, and try to fight them 
down. A fourteen-year-old boy whom I knew 
interpreted as disloyalty to his " sweetheart 
mother" a love feeling roused by a girl whom he 
met at dancing-school. A girl of sixteen felt 
ashamed to meet her father's eye whenever she 
received a letter from a youthful admirer. 

The tortures that adolescents often go through 
are seldom fully realized. They swing from 
heights of ecstasy to pits of despondency. At 
one time the world on whose threshold they are 
standing seems to beckon with cheerful and in- 
viting aspect. At another it haunts their 
thoughts as a place of terror and threatening 
dangers. Girls sometimes feel that if their 
mother died they would instantly kill themselves. 
Then again, with a yearning for freedom almost 
uncontrollable, they actually begin to plan how 
best they can run away from home and earn their 
own living. Such emotional upheavals may 
even lead to suicide. 



32 YOUR INNER SELF 

. From twelve to eighteen young people need all 
the sympathetic understanding of which their 
elders are capable. Few adolescents confide 
their inner struggles and when they do it is sel- 
dom to their own parents, sisters, or brothers. 
Confession is almost never volunteered. 

The average adolescent needs the guiding hand 
of one who is strong in character and ripe in the 
experience of life. They are quick to detect 
sham, and under no circumstances should they 
ever be lied to. Information on sex matters 
should be given by the parents simply, truthfully, 
and fully. Such first-hand knowledge is an 
incalculable protection to the growing boy or 
girl. 

The saddest mental disease of all is Dementia 
Prcecox. It is mental derangement of the young 
and begins during adolescent years. Seclusive, 
day-dreaming, erratic children should always be 
suspected. Once firmly established, dementia 
praecox is a progressive and incurable deteri- 
oration of all mental faculties. Yet a thorough 
analysis of the subject's thoughts and feelings — 
a true confession of the inner self— may prevent 
its development. 

Whether or not the most advanced and pro- 
gressive minds pass through the most turbulent 



THE SPAN OF LIFE 33 

adolescent periods is open to question. Suffice 
it to say that many of our keenest, brightest, and 
most successful adults have done so. 

This hazardous period is not necessarily termi- 
nated at eighteen. Some persons are very slow 
in emerging from adolescence entirely. When 
they do, they enter upon the final stage of de- 
velopment — the Adult Period. 

It would be difficult to define in psychological 
terms just what an adult is. Actual age seems 
to have very little to do with the matter. Men 
and women may have reached the proper stature 
and their physiques may impress one as mature, 
yet their bodies may be governed by minds that 
are adolescent, if not infantile in character. I 
daresay most of the failures of life can be traced 
to inability, for some reason or other, to develop 
out of adolescence. It is like a full-grown dog 
who still has patches of puppy wool sticking to 
his pelt. 

An adult could be perhaps described as a hu- 
man being who has developed and adopted a set 
of concepts of his own which he cannot very 
readily be persuaded to give up and which, in- 
deed, he may even try to foist on other people. 

Among the cardinal attributes of adulthood 
are emotional stability, intellectual control, a 



34 YOUR INNER SELF 

planfulness of life, and a ripening of judgment 
gradually developed out of the hits and misses of 
experience. 

Perhaps some of my readers feel that they 
have fallen short of such an ideal. It is particu- 
larly such persons who would profit by a con- 
fession of the inner self. 



Chapter IV 

EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES 

Fixations — The CEdipus and Electra 

Myths 

As the individual passes through the five 
stages of development discussed in the previous 
chapter, the four main libido urges come more 
and more to the fore and try to assert themselves. 
The reproductive libido lies practically dormant 
until adolescence. The nutritional presents it- 
self for recognition and satisfaction at the very 
threshold of life. 

In any development by successive stages, be it 
mental or physical, some elements will progress 
regularly and successfully from one stage to 
another, while others will be retarded in their 
onward march, still others arrested — that is, 
stopped at some stage from developing any 
further. 

In average individuals — that is, the majority 
of persons — the libidoes pass through all five 
stages from that of the infantile period up to and 

35 









36 YOUR INNER SELF 

through the adult period successfully and with- 
out hindrance. 

Other persons may develop like the majority 
in this respect but somewhat more slowly. 
Among these we might find a boy of eighteen 
still subdued, without initiative, cowed by his 
parents whom he still over-idealizes, and reason- 
ing much as he did when a child of seven. This 
lad will eventually reach adulthood although it 
may take him ten years longer than the average 
person. All his libidinous urges, or some of 
them, were retarded in their development. 

A second type of case would be one in which 
one or more of the libidinous urges were arrested 
in their development at one or another of the 
five stages of the span of life. 

Suppose a man of thirty-five, engaged in a 
business of his own, still retains his childish 
attitude of reverence toward his omnipotent 
father in the way that children do during the 
over-idealization period. This man, despite his 
adult years, has been rendered so dependent 
upon the parental direction that he is unable to 
buy a bill of goods of any consequence without 
first obtaining the approval of his father. At 
thirty-five he still feels much as he did at six or 
seven. 



EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES 37 

As long as the father lived, the child's vene- 
ration might be very convenient in making things 
easy for him. But what would happen after the 
father's death? Certainly he would find him- 
self seriously handicapped, and the loss of his 
props might mean business ruin. 

When any libido is arrested in this way in the 
course of its development we speak of the result 
as a Fixation. In the case just outlined it would 
be a fixation of the self-preservation libido. 

We never find all libidinous urges crippled by 
fixations. This could appear only in feeble- 
mindedness. Usually it is one or two great 
libidinous strivings that are fixed. Fixations 
may occur to one of the main four (nutrition, 
reproductive, self-preservation, ego) and in ad- 
dition some other libidinous urge that can prop- 
erly be classed under one of these. 

Fixations are usually handicaps, yet all per- 
sons, no matter how successful and adjusted they 
may be, have some. It is not so much the ques- 
tion of how many fixations one has, as it is the 
question of their relative importance and the 
stage of development at which the fixation took 
place. 

The illustrative case above shows a harmful 
fixation toward the father — a distinct handicap 



38 YOUR INNER SELF 

in the battle of life. If this fixation had oc- 
curred later, during the adolescent period, the 
man in question would have felt rather doubtful 
and uncertain of his own judgment and would 
have been swayed more by his father's opinions 
than by those of any one else. Although still a 
handicap this adolescent fixation would not be 
so dominating. 

We all have some fixations concerning one or 
both of our parents. Their influence can never 
be wholly shaken off. 

Many fixations, then, are handicaps, but not 
all. On the other hand, certain fixations es- 
tablished during the first and second periods act 
as stabilizers to character. During the first 
eight years of their child's life parents have a 
practically unobstructed opportunity of fixing 
character traits of a helpful, activating variety. 
If they neglect this chance, it will never be theirs 
again in a like degree. The enduring influence 
of early ethical or religious training is a good 
example of such a benign fixation. 

The unwise checking of a child's normal curi- 
osity will cause a harmful fixation. Children 
at an early age become curious as to how babies 
are born and where they come from. The arri- 
val of a new baby in the household or next door 



EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES 39 

sets the child questioning. An ignorant nurse 
almost always supplies a fictional explanation 
that the baby was brought by a stork and 
dropped down the chimney; that it came in the 
Doctor's black bag, or was found in a cabbage in 
the garden. Even mothers too often will evade 
the issue in some similar way, 

A child of any reasonable alertness of mind 
is not satisfied. The explanation does not tally 
with such facts of animal life as he may have ob- 
served. He scents a mystery. Before long the 
vulgar talk of some playmate, who has possibly 
already received an evil initiation into life, makes 
it seem that this mystery which centres in the 
mother he adores is itself evil, connected with 
things he has been taught to regard as "naughti- 
ness/ 5 He may even go so far as to fancy that 
these stories have been told him to hide some 
action of which his parents are ashamed. Or 
in his deep love for his mother he may feel 
intense hatred for his father, whose victim he 
considers her to be. 

These ideas may seem too morbid to be har- 
boured in the mind of the average child, but they 
are fairly typical of the harvest of evil actually 
reaped from the unwise checking of a quite 
natural and innocent desire for information. 



4 o YOUR INNER SELF 

We focus our attention upon fixations that are 
hindrances rather than upon those that are helps, 
because the former cause trouble and the latter 
do not. Fixation hindrances prevent the indi- 
vidual from developing to his fullest possibilities 
and often lie at the root of nervousness. Fix- 
ation helps, on the other hand, are the rule and 
are preponderant in normally adjusted persons. 

Compare the action of germs. The disease- 
producing germs play such havoc that we are 
apt to think of germs as always harmful. Yet 
many germs are not only harmless but distinctly 
vital and beneficial to the human family. Were 
it not for certain kinds of bacteria that manu- 
facture nitrogen in the soil, agricultural products 
would be tremendously diminished, and might, 
indeed, entirely cease to appear. 

The love relationship between the child and 
its parents is the strongest tie that exists. It is 
probable that the love between mother and son is 
even stronger than that between father and son, 
while the father-daughter love is more powerful 
than that between mother and daughter. 

At first thought these statements may seem 
far-fetched. Families may come to mind where 
this rule does not appear to apply. Although a 
cursory investigation might lead one to such a 



EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES 41 

conclusion, deeper study and a mental analysis 
of the individuals in question would undoubtedly 
bring to light the preponderating influence of the 
mother — the mother fixation. 

Sophocles, the Greek poet, crystallized this fun- 
damental principle in his drama "(Edipus Rex." 
Laius, the father of (Edipus, and king of Thebes, 
had been warned by an oracle that he would die 
at the hands of his own son. Hence, soon after 
the birth of (Edipus, Laius gave the child to a 
shepherd with orders that it be put to death. 
Having compassion for the baby, the peasant 
secretly spared its life. (Edipus therefore grew 
up ignorant of his royal parentage. Later, when 
full grown, (Edipus met Laius in a narrow path, 
quarrelled with him, and killed him. He then 
wandered on to Thebes not knowing that his 
victim was his father. 

It happened that the city of Thebes was being 
terrorized by a monster, the Sphinx, which 
stood at the gates and propounded a riddle to 
every passer-by. Those unable to solve the 
riddle were devoured. (Edipus solved the riddle 
and slew the Sphinx. 

In gratitude for its deliverance Thebes made 
(Edipus king and offered him in marriage the 
hand of Jocasta, the wife of the former monarch. 



42 YOUR INNER SELF 

Thus (Edipus, unknowingly, married his own 
mother. Certain versions have it that later, 
when the tragedy was discovered, Jocasta 
hanged herself and (Edipus put out his own 
eyes. 

A somewhat similar idea is to be found in the 
"Electra". Here the daughter of Agamemnon 
incites her brother, Orestes, to slay their mother 
in revenge for the death of their father. There 
is depicted the overpowering love between father 
and daughter at the expense of the mother. 

As generally applied, the (Edipus fixation 
(often known as the (Edipus complex) is made 
to include both mother-son and father-daughter 
relationships. 

Hundreds of plays, poems, and novels have 
been written since the time of Sophocles in which 
the (Edipus plot has been used in one way or 
another. This, in itself, proves the enormous 
sway which the (Edipus myth has had over hu- 
man thought and behaviour. 

Since the (Edipus fixation is the strongest of 
all, it is highly important to understand what 
the effects of the mother and father training 
upon son and daughter respectively are. Here 
arises a question of pedagogics. Is it more ad- 
visable that the mother supervise the teaching 



EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES 43 

of the son and the father the daughter, or vice 
versa? Or is it better that the father try to 
influence the son, and the mother the daughter, 
so as deliberately to neutralize the powerful 
GEdipus fixation which is certain to exert its 
influence sufficiently anyway? Again, during 
what years — in which of the five periods of 
development — would such deliberate interfer- 
ence with natural laws best serve their purpose? 

Questions such as these are not easy to answer. 
They will continue to be held increasingly 
important to educators as the doctrines of 
psychoanalytic psychology in their ramified 
application to various activities of life become 
more generally accepted. 

Savages and ancient peoples instinctively 
recognized the CEdipus fixation. They also 
realized its sex dangers, for they took great pains 
to prevent such close intermarriages as between 
father and daughter (incest). Had they not felt 
that the strong love existing between parents and 
children might result in an intimacy leading to 
race degeneration, marriage taboos would prob- 
ably not have been established until moral and 
religious forces had become operative centuries 
later among civilized nations. This underlying 
principle of race preservation has been carried 



44 YOUR INNER SELF 

still further in our present day and age so that 
even cousin marriages are held by many to be 
dangerous. 

Parents often unwittingly bring the CEdipus 
idea to the fore within the family circle especially 
when there are a number of children of opposite 
sexes. Too often the mother shows distinct 
favouritism for her sons while the father shows a 
like preference for his daughters. The children, 
somehow seeming to feel the naturalness of such 
preferences, accept them without protest or 
complaint and by showing similar preferences 
themselves, in turn establish the (Edipus fixation 
upon an even stronger foundation. What was 
unconscious preference now becomes conscious. 
What was formerly natural and rather hap- 
hazard now becomes deliberate. 

Women patients have often told me that their 
mothers had the greater influence upon their 
lives, while men have credited their father's 
dominance as the more important. These cases 
may not justly be classed as exceptional. In 
some of them the parent of the opposite sex had 
died young and the influence did not persist. 
Sometimes it was a brother who usurped the 
place of the father, while in others it was an 
older sister who substituted the mother. Here 3 



EARLY HELPS AND HINDRANCES 45 

then, the (Edipus principle still ruled although 
it had been transferred. 

Like appeals to the unlike and the attraction 
between opposite sexes is always stronger than 
that between persons of the same sex. The 
fascination is largely unconscious, but it is 
fundamental and irresistible. It is the result of 
the OEdipus fixation. 

Much more could be written about the theory 
of fixations, and reference will be made to them 
again later on. To sum up, fixations are 
emotional foundation stones which condition the 
whole supervening framework of later life. One 
fixation, especially when firmly established in 
the early years, may make non-effective a host 
of others and influence a lifetime. Some are 
conscious but the most are not. 

Fixations are tremendously motivating un- 
conscious factors that either retard or propel 
human conduct. Only a thorough searching 
of the inner self will reveal them in their true 
light and relationship. 



Chapter V 

THE CONFLICT OF LIFE 

The World of Reality — The Pleasure- 
Pain Principle — Repressions 

The conditions and circumstances amid which 
the child finds itself on emerging from babyhood 
into a consciousness of actualities, we call the 
World of Reality. 

Take it by and large, the world of reality is an 
unsympathetic place, progressing according to 
the law of the "survival of the fittest/' despite 
all that civilization and enlightenment have 
effected in the course of the ages to modify 
primitive ruthlessness and train men in the art 
of living as social units. It is full of harsh and 
uncompromising facts — a bleak contrast to the 
rose-lit, softly padded world of fairyland and 
romance within which a little child lives, sur- 
rounded by parental love and care. 

However, even long before the child comes 
into actual conflict with this world of reality, he 
has grown to realize with ever-increasing clear- 

4 6 



THE CONFLICT OF LIFE 47 

ness that he cannot have his own way in every- 
thing, that his every wish cannot be gratified, 
that to avoid reprimands and punishments he 
must yield to conditions imposed upon him from 
outside. If he does what he is bidden to do, he 
not only escapes punishment but wins praise and 
caresses as well, or perhaps gains some coveted 
pleasure. 

Even in this family world the so-called 
Pleasure-Pain Principle is already in full oper- 
ation as a motivating factor conditioning the 
child's acts, and is therefore well on the road 
toward becoming an important criterion of be- 
haviour. 

The boy who is spanked for stealing from the 
kitchen window where they have been cooling 
apple turnovers destined by his mother for 
"company' dessert, learns by a simple appli- 
cation of cause and effect, in this case his father's 
hand, that he is likely to suffer an even more 
severe infliction of pain if he steals from a neigh- 
bour. Later experience adds the knowledge 
that similar rigid standards prevail in the world 
of reality, that society has established police 
courts to punish like offences. 

Pleasure and pain seem at first to be con- 
sciously noted. After a time they automatically 



48 YOUR INNER SELF 

and unconsciously exert their influence in regu- 
lating* whether or not, and to what degree, the 
nutrition, reproductive, self-preservation, and 
ego libidoes shall express themselves in the 
world of reality. It is much like the matter of 
walking. At first the child walks by a conscious 
and deliberate effort. Later walking becomes 
automatic and unconscious. 

We have, then, a human being with instinctive, 
dynamic, libidinous desires trying to assert them- 
selves, placed in a world that is real, relatively 
fixed, and unchangeable — cold, hard, and stern. 

If any libido expresses itself in the world of 
reality and succeeds — that is, is approved by the 
world and allowed to succeed — the individual 
experiences a pleasure sensation. If any libido 
tries to express itself in the world of reality and 
fails — that is, the particular form of its ex- 
pression is not tolerated by the world — a feeling 
of pain results. Every time a libido is approved 
and succeeds, the resultant pleasure emotion 
makes the libidinous urge bolder in its attempt 
again to express itself successfully. In the same 
way, every time a libido is denounced by the 
world's verdict and fails, the resultant pain 
emotion renders it timid and tends to discourage 
it from trying to express itself again. 



I THE CONFLICT OF LIFE 49 

One boy, in the presence of the "gang/' calls 
another a coward. Immediately the self-preser- 
vation instinct of the other boy comes into play, 
likewise his ego libido, and he not only resents 
being taunted but he resents it particularly 
before his friends. A fight follows. If he wins 
he will be the more ready to retaliate upon other 
boys if they attempt a similar attack. If, how- 
ever, the boy "gets licked/ 3 ' he will probably be 
more cautious the next time in showing resent- 
ment. If he gets the worst of it each time he 
stands up for his rights, he will undoubtedly be- 
come afraid to defend himself no matter how 
great the provocation. The pleasure feeling of 
success emboldens him. The pain feeling of 
failure intimidates him. 

Exactly the same principles hold true for 
adults. The world of reality as comprehended 
by a grown-up man and woman is infinitely more 
stern and cruel than that experienced by the 
parent-protected child. Not only that, but 
libidinous urges — especially the reproductive — 
are decidedly more insistent after adolescence. 

Throughout the duration of life the pleasure- 
pain principle operates as a fundamental moti- 
vating factor. 

The normal adult, without the tangible pro- 



50 YOUR INNER SELF 

tecting influence of his parents, stands quite 
alone, face to face with the world of reality. His 
ego libido leads him to try to conquer it in some 
way, by earning his own living, by getting 
married, by developing his intellectual capa- 
bilities or what-not. In some of his libidinous 
strivings he succeeds, in others he fails. In all 
these efforts we may picture him as coming into 
contact and more or less into conflict with con- 
ditions as they are. * 

The instinctive urges which he is able to ex- 
press successfully are not of much concern for us 
since they do not result in disappointment and 
despair, hence mental illness. Our vital interest 
is in studying the mental state that follows his 
inability and failure to express the urges in the 
world of reality. To be sure, no one fails in 
all his libidinous wishes. Everyone, however, 
fails in some. 

Bearing in mind the difference between the 
conscious and the unconscious minds, you will 
see plainly that if the conscious mind were for- 
ever to harp on the failures of the unconscious 
libidinous strivings, it would before long be un- 
able to give thought to anything else; it would 
cease to be a directing organ, and would sooner 
or later lapse into a hopeless muddle of con- 



THE CONFLICT OF LIFE 51 

fusion. It is very necessary., therefore, that the 
conscious mind protect itself in some way so that 
it can go on with its activities without being 
dominated by the dread of an overshadowing 
disappointment. 

Therefore, when the conscious mind is worried 
by disappointment (by thwartings of libidinous 
desires in the world of reality) it tries to rid 
itself of these disturbing thoughts, to "forget" 
them. Psychologically this means that the 
conscious represses the disturbing thoughts from 
the conscious into the unconscious. 

Everybody has repressions; nobody can be 
entirely free from them. Every unconscious 
mind is full of repressions. 

The lower animals in a state of wildness have 
the fewest repressions because, in the first place, 
their libidinous urges are not numerous and are 
more pronouncedly of a self-preservation, nu- 
trition, and reproductive character than any- 
thing else, and secondly, they express these 
instinctive desires without hindrance or re- 
straint at every opportunity. Morals, social 
customs, and the laws of civilization are non- 
existent for them. They eat when they like and 
when they can; they kill other animals and fight 
for their lives when attacked; they mate pro- 



52 YOUR INNER SELF 

miscuously in accordance with the law of their 
kind. 

Savages show a certain community interest, 
and from that development follows of necessity 
the restricting of instinctive urges for the good 
of the other members of the tribe or clan. They 
may still show an animal ruthlessness toward 
those of another tribe, but within their own 
federation, of whatever sort, they inhibit their 
libidinous desires to a greater or less degree. 

In the highly organized society in which man 
lives repressions are naturally most numerous. 
People cannot do what they like or even say 
what they like. Society, after hundreds of 
years of development and change, has put its 
stamp of approval upon certain forms of conduct 
while at the same time disapproving, condemn- 
ing, or even punishing certain other forms. 
Whereas at one time "might was right" — the 
self-preservation libido holding full sway over 
and above all other considerations — nowadays 
the fighting abilities are not accepted as a 
standard. Persons who persist in forcing their 
own wills and desires upon others by sheer 
might are put in jail. Hundreds of examples 
could be given of things considered quite right 
in the past that are now absolutely taboo. In 



THE CONFLICT OF LIFE 53 

the Middle Ages highway robbery was a sort of 
sporting proposition; to-day footpads rank as the 
lowest type of criminals. Sex license and laxity 
were greater years ago than at present. Society, 
by its manners, customs, and taboos, has es- 
tablished the monogamous marriage state and 
the home as fundamental standards, and pro- 
miscuous sex expression is forced to resort ta 
clandestine and secret outlets in order to escape 
the censure of the modern point of view. 

To be civilized, educated, and refined means, 
in effect, having one's libidinous desires so under 
control that they harmonize with the dicta of 
society so far as possible. Our whole edu- 
cational system has been formed to teach the 
lesson that it pays to be inhibited and controlled. 
Education points out the road we must take to 
gain this self-mastery. It also shows what has 
happened when others have wandered from the 
path. A thorough, deep, and broad insight into 
the sum of human experience leads to suggestions 
how instinctive, unconscious demands can be sub- 
stituted and expressed in acceptable forms. 

The mentally sick and inferior, psychopaths 
and criminals, have not learned from life these 
vital lessons. They persist in thinking, feeling, 
and acting like the savages and the lower 



54 YOUR INNER SELF 

animals. Their social instincts remain primitive 
and underdeveloped. Although they are "more 
to be pitied than censured/ 3 society must 
necessarily protect itself against them — must, 
in fact, make them protect themselves against 
themselves. But the method of protection 
adopted need not be the reformatory and the 
prison. Psychological understanding suggests 
the hospital and the asylum. 

We will grant, then, that pleasure and pain are 
the primary emotions which operate as guides in 
prompting or inhibiting the expression of libi- 
dinous urges. As a rule, these urges when ful- 
filled give a very distinct pleasure feeling (eating 
as a satisfaction of the nutrition libido); or the 
feeling of discomfort or pain is unmistakable 
when they are thwarted (disappointment in a 
love affair). 

There is another group which should be con- 
sidered in this connection. When the indi- 
vidual can no longer discriminate whether a 
given experience in the world of reality is rousing 
within him sensations of pleasure or pain he be- 
comes consciously confused and is in danger of 
what is known as a "nervous breakdown. ,: He 
is like a ship that has lost its rudder. He begins 
to drift aimlessly, losing interest and ambition, 



THE CONFLICT OF LIFE 55 

feeling that there is nothing to live for. He 
doesn't know what he wants. He has lost the 
standards by which he has lived — the standards 
which reward by a pleasurable emotion be- 
haviour of a certain sort, and which inflict dis- 
comfort or pain when he acts otherwise. 

Confusion is a danger signal because it indi- 
cates that the emotional life of the individual is 
not working in harmony with intellectual think- 
ing. Under such conditions thinking may 
gradually become more and more muddled and, 
as consciousness begins to realize the dilemma, 
depression is likely to follow. Should fear super- 
vene in addition, the individual is in a critical 
state. Fear is the most powerful undermining 
emotion that exists. 

There is a cause for everything — even an ex- 
cuse. There is just as much reason why some 
succeed and are happy as why others fail and are 
miserable. There is a scientific, causative evo- 
lution of the individual step by step and year by 
year. This evolution largely concerns the ways 
and means by which the libidinous urges have 
succeeded in expressing themselves and the suc- 
cess with which consciousness has been able to 
repress them or substitute them. 



Chapter VI 

UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 

Complexes — The Psychic Censor— Intro- 
version and Extroversion — Regressions — 
Sadism and Masochism — Ambivalence 

It has been pointed out that consciousness 
tries to forget unpleasant experiences. This 
is equivalent to saying, in psychoanalytic par- 
lance, that libidinous strivings which have been 
thwarted in the world of reality are repressed 
into the unconscious in order to get them out of 
the way. 

All such unpleasant and annoying conscious 
ideas that have been repressed are called Com- 
plexes. 

A complex, then, is a repressed thought to 
which a disagreeable emotion is attached. It may 
be an idea which has been extremely painful for 
consciousness to bear, or one which has relative- 
ly little pain attached to it. Nevertheless, it is 
always something which consciousness wants to 
forget. Definite sex feelings toward the oppo- 

56 






UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 57 

site parent (CEdipus complex), of which the 
individual is ashamed and which he struggles 
against, would be of the former variety. Fi- 
nancial inability to purchase an automobile may 
serve as an example of the latter. 

All complexes are lodged in the unconscious 
and try to reenter the conscious. The amount 
of force which characterizes this effort toward 
reentrance is conditioned by the amount of 
emotion attached to the repressed idea. That 
is, if the thwarted desire was intense in the 
beginning and it was accordingly difficult to give 
the desire up and to repress it, the complex which 
results from the repression will put forth a 
correspondingly intense effort to reenter con- 
sciousness. 

A girl falls in love. Back of her love interest 
and energizing it is the reproductive libido, 
seeking outlet and expression. The sex urge is 
intense and pervasive and thoughts of the one 
she loves naturally throng her mind. The 
lovers quarrel and the engagement is broken. 
Immediately consciousness tries to eliminate all 
thought of her lover who has now become the 
symbol of the thwarted reproductive libido. 
The girl uses all available means of forgetting 
her disastrous experience. Sooner or later she 



58 YOUR INNER SELF 

succeeds in repressing the love affair with its 
painful emotional associations. This repression 
becomes a complex in the unconscious. 

But such complexes, such thwarted desires, 
are not so easily set aside. The complexes try 
to reenter consciousness, seeking again oppor- 
tunity for fulfilment in the world of reality. 
The pressure of this urgent thought may cause 
the girl to fall in love with another man, or, lack- 
ing a fresh stimulus, to renew relations with her 
former sweetheart. 

This outline illustrates the main principles. 
It may be added that a thwarted love affair does 
not represent all the sex repressions which such a 
girl may have. Others might be disappoint- 
ments concerning the successful rivalries of her 
friends and inability to travel or to attend social 
functions where the opportunity of meeting men 
is favourable. Because of their relative insig- 
nificance compared to disappointment in love 
such complexes might never make a strong 
effort to reenter consciousness, the girl accepting 
her lack of opportunities philosophically as inevi- 
table. The unconscious is full of disappoint- 
ments with slight emotional content such as these. 

Another factor may now be added to the 
theories studied thus far. This concerns the way 



UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 59 

in which consciousness keeps repressed material 
repressed. 

The mechanism by which complexes are kept 
from reentering consciousness as long as possible 
is known as the Psychic Censor. 

Just as the nurse of a convalescent person 
withholds letters containing bad or exciting news 
and delivers to the patient only those which are 
pleasurable and will not disturb, so the mental 
psychic censor stations itself between conscious- 
ness and unconsciousness, as it were, and stands 
guard. One might say that all complexes are 
considered by the psychic censor as persona 
non gratce in consciousness. Since consciousness 
has ostracized them through repression it is the 
censor's business to see that they remain exiled. 

Were it not for the psychic censor, libidinous 
urges would certainly succeed in breaking 
through their repressions and disturb conscious- 
ness all over again. As a matter of fact, strong, 
repressed libidinous urges often do so succeed, 
but by far the greatest number are not able to 
pass this guardian of consciousness unless they 
are disguised. 

The forms of disguises by means of which 
complexes may elude the psychic censor will be 
taken up in the next chapter. 






60 YOUR INNER SELF 

Philosophers, such as Ostwald, James, Jung, 
and others, have attempted to divide people into 
two main classes of more or less opposing ten- 
dencies: one objective and materialistic, clearly 
comprehending the facts and conditions of life 
and making a sane submission to them; the other 
idealistic and subjective, living more or less in an 
imaginary world of their own creation, impatient 
and rebellious when brought into sharp conflict 
with the active world and its exactions. The 
former are influenced by the main currents of 
their time, swim with them rather than against 
them. Such make wise teachers, sound states- 
men and politicians. Above all they dovetail 
well with the world of reality in which they live. 
The latter do not succeed in matters of personal 
contact or persuasion as they are seclusive, shut- 
in, speculative, and dreamy. Creative geniuses 
are apt to be of this type. 

In his book, "Mechanisms of Character 
Formation," Dr. William A. White adapts the 
psychoanalytic principles to these conceptions 
in a very clear and pertinent way. I shall quote 
him here because what he says fits in well with 
the general exposition under consideration: 

With respect to this whole problem it would seem that 
there should be some broader general principle under which 



UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 61 

this body of facts could be grouped. This principle I 
believe exists in the terms of the libido. In other words, 
the broadest basis upon which men can be divided into 
two camps rests upon the answer to this question, Where 
is the libido going? Without? or Within? Does he 
attach his libido to objects in the outside world? or does 
he find his main interests within? In contemplating the 
world only as he sees it reflected within himself? Is he of 
the extroverted or introverted type? 

By Extroversion, then, is meant the harmo- 
nizing of libidinous urges with the world of reality. 
Introversion means the inability or failure of the 
libidinous urges to harmonize with the world of 
reality. 

Although individuals may often be classed as 
predominantly either extroverted or introverted, 
no one belongs exclusively in one category or 
the other. Decided extroverters may possess 
certain introverted traits. Introverters may be 
somewhat extroverted. It is the judicious blend 
of introversive and extroversive characteristics 
which produces the most sympathetic and attrac- 
tive types of personality. 

The more an individual is repressed because of 
his strivings being thwarted in the world of 
reality the more introverted he becomes. Dur- 
ing adolescence introversion may become so 
marked as to result in Dementia Prcecox. On 



62 YOUR INNER SELF 

the whole, introversion is not an advantageous 
trait from the standpoint of mental hygiene. It 
makes for timidity and an attitude of turning 
one's back on the facts of life that may lead to 
disastrous results. 

Freud has likened the libido to a stream or 
river which flows steadily onward throughout 
life. Should it become dammed because of an 
obstacle in its way, the stream will either rise to 
a sufficient height to overcome the obstacle or it 
will become stationary and flow backward, as it 
were, filling up and enlarging smaller streams 
which had been directions of lesser resistance to 
the river in the earlier beginnings of its course. 
Putting it another way, the river returns to a 
former and earlier pattern or manner of flow. It 
has been hampered and thwarted. It returns 
now to filling up pools and ponds and side 
tributaries just as it did when it was in its 
infantile stage of development before it dis- 
covered a proper channel and outlet. 

The human libidinous urges are like that. 
Repressions lead to introversion and this, in 
turn, tends to result in what is known as Re- 
gression. 

When the libido regresses it returns to former 
stages of development and gains satisfaction by 



UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 63 

expressing itself as it did years before. In short, 
it again becomes infantile. 

Just as the libidinous fixations were halts and 
arrests at various levels of progress marking the 
span of life, so libidinous regressions are an 
attempt to return (a retreat) to the sheltered 
protection of childhood days. A defeated 
libidinous urge may regress and seek refuge in 
the very first stage of development — the infan- 
tile period. The adult under these circum- 
stances then very probably looks to his mother 
for assistance and guidance as in the days when 
he was a helpless toddler. Should the regression 
stop at the period of over-idealization, our sub- 
ject might very likely gain compensation for his 
life's disappointments by comparing the superior- 
ity of his own parents to the men and women who 
worsted him in the world outside. A regression 
to the criticism period might find the thwarted 
one railing at his parents for a bad bringing-up, 
offered in excuse for his own adult failures. 

This gives you a working idea of regression. 
The matter is not entirely simple. Frequently 
libidinous regressions do not display themselves 
in such evident fashion but are highly symbolized 
and disguised. They are, nevertheless, reducible 
to the fundamental principles mentioned. 



64 YOUR INNER SELF 

Akin to this general subject of libidinous urges 
and their conflict with the world of reality are 
Sadism and Masochism. 

Technically, these terms refer to abnormal 
sex practices and both are derived from the 
names of sex perverts, the Marquis de Sade and 
Sacher-Masoch. Although sadism in its re- 
stricted sense would refer to sex gratification 
derived from physical suffering given to others, 
and masochism to sex gratification derived from 
being physically tortured by someone else, it is 
advantageous to apply these expressions in a 
much broader sense. In this more compre- 
hensive meaning they refer to pleasure derived 
from causing pain to a beloved object (sadism) 
and to pleasure derived from receiving pain from 
a beloved object (masochism) — the term "be- 
loved object' including not merely a sex object 
but any other thing, animate or inanimate, upon 
which libidinous interest is centred in the world 
of reality. 

When the lover pinches the cheek of his sweet- 
heart we recognize the sadistic element, but the 
same conception of sadism may be applied to 
the man who glories in the announcement that 
he has "punished his work' for that day. In 
the one case it is sadism in connection with the 



UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 65 

reproductive libido; in the other it is sadism 
linked with the ego libido, the man's work being 
dear to his heart, one of his beloved objects. 
The same mechanism is operative when the lover 
teases his sweetheart, tries to make her jealous, 
or promises to write every day and then de- 
liberately fails to do so, only in these instances 
the sadism is more disguised, less tangibly phys- 
ical, and more highly symbolized. 

Examples of masochism can be found in the 
attitude of women toward motherhood. The 
patient endurance of the mother in bearing the 
malaise of pregnancy and the pangs of travail, 
and her unshakable, uncomplaining love toward 
her children from infancy onward may be re- 
garded as masochistic traits. Physical and 
mental suffering gladly borne by women for the 
sake of their beloved ones occur so frequently 
that it is probable that the female sex is by 
nature more masochistic than sadistic. 

Extroverters are not timid in their efforts to 
harmonize with the world of reality, for they 
plunge into the thick of the struggle and grap- 
ple with problems fearlessly. Accordingly, they 
are also sadistic. A man so tender-hearted that 
he would feel remorse every time he got the 
better of a competitor would cut a sorry figure 



66 YOUR INNER SELF 

in business. Virility, strength, ambition, power 
are sadistic. In like manner introverters are 
apt to be masochistic. 

In discussing the topics of pleasure and pain, 
extroversion and introversion, and sadism and 
masochism, the reader has probably been struck 
by the fact that we have been studying oppo- 
site and apparently opposing tendencies. This 
predilection to comparison in terms of oppo- 
sites is a well-recognized mental attribute. It 
was touched upon in the consideration of the 
pleasure-pain principle. The perception or re- 
cognition of opposites is spoken of as Ambiva- 
lence. 

We could not conceive of a mountain if we did 
not also understand the conception of a valley, 
nor could we picture a valley without knowing 
what a mountain is. The same intimate re- 
lationship between opposites exists in multitudi- 
nous reactions of the mind. High suggests low; 
tall, short; thick, thin; happy, sad; beautiful, 
ugly; white, black; and so forth to innumerable 
examples. 

In psychoanalysis the theory of ambivalence 
has an even deeper significance. As expressed 
by Bleuler, ambi valency "gives to the same idea 
two contrary feeling tones and invests the same 



UNCONSCIOUS MECHANISMS 67 

thought simultaneously with both a positive and 
a negative character." 

It is by this same token that people can hate 
the most those whom they have loved the best — 
love and hate being ambivalent. This principle 
also explains many of the strange thought that 
people find themselves harbouring — ideas and 
feelings that shame them and make them be- 
lieve they are " losing their minds," no other 
possible reason seeming plausible. 

The mechanisms of the unconscious are intri- 
cate, and as we study them they seem more like 
fiction than the peculiarities of human behaviour 
which they attempt to explain. Nevertheless, 
as hypotheses they succeed in unravelling the 
mysteries of life — they work ! As William James 
would say, they are " pragmatic. " 

The more practical applications of the theo- 
retical principles discussed in this section will 
appear in due course as our study of psycho- 
analysis proceeds. 



Chapter VII 

SAFETY DEVICES 

Defense Reactions — Organ Inferiority- — 
Conversion — Dreams — Sublimation 

A patient who had recently begun psycho- 
analytic treatment said to me one day: 'My 
unconscious must be a seething caldron." 

This forceful metaphor expressed the state of 
his inner self rather well. Mental analysis had 
led him to realize the pent-up and repressed 
emotions which had been influencing him for 
years to the detriment of success and happiness 
but of which he had remained blissfully ignorant 
— consciously unaware. 

The unconscious is, in truth, often a seething 
caldron in cases where the conscious torments — 
the symptoms — are almost unbearable. But in 
the great majority of cases the situation is by no 
means so alarming and although low mutterings 
may at times be vaguely heard from that part of 
the mind which is not consciously recognized, 
the outward manifestations of disturbances 

68 



SAFETY DEVICES 69 

within are not particularly insistent and dra- 
matic. 

It often takes a long time — years, in fact — ■ 
before some people realize that they are losing 
their grip, that they are not up to former stand- 
ards of efficiency, that their thoughts and actions 
are in any way unusual. To be sure, there are 
also persons who watch themselves continually 
and are ever on the alert for abnormalities of 
thinking and behaviour. Being excessively intro- 
spective is just as bad as not being introspective 
enough. Over-watchfulness would not be so 
likely to produce evil results were it scientific 
and based upon psychological premises. The 
difficulty is that the more laymen think about 
themselves, the more bewildered, as a rule, they 
become. In the wake of confusion come fear 
and mental distress. 

People are apt to wait altogether too long be- 
fore they seek advice and help. Were early 
manifestations of mental disharmony only treat- 
ed in time, more actual cures could be effected 
and hopeless cases would become a rarity. 
The very earliest suggestive signs should receive 
attention even when they are noticeable in 
childhood. It is never too early to begin a 
study of the inner self. 



70 YOUR INNER SELF 

Although nature's workings are not always 
perfect they nevertheless have a self-protective 
quality that is marvellous. Nature has many 
safety guards and appliances which it brings 
into use in both organic and mental difficul- 
ties. Were it not for such protective devices 
human beings would succumb long before their 
time. 

Some of the most interesting safeguards as 
regards mental processes are known as Defense 
Reactions. 

As the term implies, defense reactions are 
modes of speech or action, defensive in character, 
that are set up in order to hide something that 
the individual does not wish known. In other 
words, as the unconscious is not always per- 
mitted to express itself in the conscious just as it 
would like to, the psychic censor disguises un- 
conscious desires in such a way that they will not 
cause offense to consciousness. Defense reac- 
tions then are poses, intended to hide what the 
individual really thinks or feels. They might be 
likened to the sheep's clothing in which the wolf 
masqueraded were it not that such a comparison 
would tend to convey the impression that defense 
reactions always conceal some shameful con- 
dition. This is not true. Defense reactions for 



SAFETY DEVICES 71 

the most part are quite harmless both in purpose 
and content. 

In the last analysis, the unconscious is strictly 
selfish, primitive, animal, and often ruthless in 
trying to express itself for the benefit of the 
organism. Consciousness is the intermediary 
between this animal striving and the world of 
reality. The conscious has come to know that 
certain methods of behaviour and speech are 
taboo in this world of reality and can be allowed 
expression only at the risk of punishment (cen- 
sure, social ostracism, loss of prestige, etc.). 
Hence defense reactions are set up in order to 
protect the individual from criticism despite the 
often unfortunate strivings (from the refined 
social viewpoint) of the barbaric and selfish 
unconscious. Defense reactions are like make- 
believe, a sort of play acting. 

The proverbial old maid who " hates" men be- 
cause they are so deceitful is a case in point. 
She doesn't really hate men at all. Her repro- 
ductive libido has perhaps long since passed 
through the stages of seeking a love outlet, one 
or more disappointments in the world of reality 
having resulted in repression. Yet her conscious- 
ness is reluctant to admit such defeat to her 
friends (ego libido striving) therefore she sets up 



72 YOUR INNER SELF 

a defense reaction so as to disguise her real feel- 
ings. She says she has chosen not to marry be- 
cause men cannot be trusted. 

There are defense reactions of which people 
are wholly unaware while others are more or less 
conscious and show purposeful deliberation. 

The man who claims he abhors alcohol may be 
exhibiting a defense reaction against a conscious 
dread of becoming a drunkard. In fact, one 
should suspect all varieties of over-emphasis or 
exaggeration as possible simulation, although the 
individual may not altogether consciously realize, 
that he is putting up a defense. Many of the 
eccentricities of human beings are also explain- 
able on this basis. There is a cause for every- 
thing, and when human behaviour deviates 
markedly from the normal the reason may not 
even be far to seek. 

. Unconscious defense reactions are often re- 
sponsible for very valuable reforms, the very 
ardour of the reformers, which stimulates them to 
renewed and vigorous efforts, being conditioned 
by the strength and force of their own repressed 
libidinous strivings. Thus, people have gone 
to their deaths advocating a reform. They are 
willing and even eager to suffer the extreme 
penalty for their convictions because deep down 



SAFETY DEVICES 73 

in the inner self lies the ambivalent possibility of 
themselves yielding to the very failing they are 
trying to eradicate in others. 

Through similar mental processes a reformed 
drunkard becomes the most enthusiastic of ab- 
stainers. Likewise proselytes show an excess 
of devotion to the new faiths they have em- 
braced. 

Among those whose mental conflicts have ad- 
vanced to the stage where they are suffering from 
actual symptoms, defense mechanisms are com- 
mon and often peculiarly interesting in the way 
in which they have been evolved. 

A student kept insisting that he was being 
teased by his classmates and that he suspected it 
was because they were jealous of his musical 
ability. The truth was that his piano playing 
was below the average and his performance in 
other studies of merely passing grade. His 
suspicions fed his ego which needed consolation. 
Here was a defense reaction to an inner real- 
ization of his own mediocrity. 

Another student complained that his eyes 
pained when he read nights. He was worrying 
because he couldn't study. He insisted that he 
wanted a college degree above everything else 
and "wouldn't quit the university for anything/' 



74 YOUR INNER SELF 

An hour's analytical conversation proved con- 
clusively that the trouble which interfered with 
study was not his eyes. His eyesight was, in 
fact, normal. The crux of his trouble was his 
being in love with a girl who said she wouldn't 
marry him until he had been graduated. If his 
eyes "went back on him' he would be excused 
from going on with his college course and could 
marry so much the sooner. 

Over-sensitiveness, for example, is a frequent 
defense reaction against an unconscious feeling of 
inferiority caused by thwarted and suppressed 
ego libido. Persons of this type do not realize it, 
but they are afraid lest some inability or failure 
which they want to hide or some weakness which 
they are ashamed of may crop out and give them 
away. Therefore they are always on the alert 
looking for signs of a disparaging or contemp- 
tuous attitude toward them. 

I knew a man who was extremely sensitive to 
what people said to him and about him. He had 
a way of referring conversations to himself. If 
he overheard a remark meant for someone else 
he would immediately wonder whether he himself 
was not being discussed. He was of attractive 
bearing, a fluent talker, and showed no anti-social 
tendencies. One would never have thought from 



SAFETY DEVICES 75 

meeting him that he was suspicious or sensitive. 
For years he had trained himself so well that his 
defense was perfect. 

Yet, at the analytic confessional, he admitted 
the dread from which he suffered. He related 
how not infrequently he would return home 
from an evening's entertainment thoroughly ex- 
hausted from watching and wondering. For 
hours he would think and think and think, trying 
until his head ached to settle to his own satis- 
faction whether anybody had made any dispar- 
aging remarks about him. 

This was rather an extreme case, yet it proved 
to be curable. The patient was finally made to 
realize consciously the complexes which his de- 
fense reactions symbolized. To set down the 
entire psychoanalysis of the case would take up 
a whole volume. Suffice it to say that the main 
complex which was dug out of his inner self had 
to do with a secret sex practice that the patient 
had battled hard to overcome during the years of 
his early manhood. 

As an example of a conscious and deliberate 
defense reaction there comes to mind the case of 
a married woman who became infatuated with a 
man who was not her husband. In order to pre- 
vent her husband from embracing her she began 



76 YOUR INNER SELF 

to cough and said that she must be developing 
tuberculosis. She admitted being ashamed of 
her trickery at the time but could not bear to 
permit the caresses of her husband whom she 
respected, but had ceased to love, and who was 
unaware of her change of heart. After a while 
her coughing became a habit, weakening her 
respiratory apparatus. Finally a physician said 
that there was danger of her developing tuber- 
culosis and she was sent to a sanatorium and 
doctored for about a year. 

This patient never had tuberculosis and never 
did develop it. Nevertheless, all attention was 
centred upon her lungs. Her difficulty was 
mental, and a psychoanalysis revealed the true 
state of affairs and uncovered the original defense 
reaction which had precipitated everything. An 
interesting feature of this case is that the patient 
mastered her infatuation for the other man long 
before she shook off her dread of tuberculosis. 

Dr. Alfred Adler, formerly a co-worker with 
Freud, has built up a system of individualistic 
psychology based largely upon the compensatory 
reaction (defense reaction) which certain ana- 
tomically defective organs undergo, or to which 
other healthy organs respond in a compensatory 
way. His theories were undoubtedly inspired 



SAFETY DEVICES 77 

by the Freudian hypotheses yet they have taken 
an original turn that is stimulating. 

It was stated in the first chapter that disease 
is a disharmony or wrong functioning of the parts 
of an organ or its disharmony as a whole with the 
rest of the body. This statement implies that 
health means a complete harmony of activity 
between all the organs including the brain. It 
follows, therefore, that if there is an organic 
defect in one of the bodily organs one ought to be 
likely to find a compensatory reaction — a defense 
reaction, if you will — in the brain. The mind 
would show some over-determined adaptability 
to the diseased physical defect, the cause being 
an attempt on the part of the mind to bring the 
entire body back into as complete harmony 
as possible. This, in truth, appears capable of 
demonstration in many cases, and is, in effect, 
the Adler viewpoint. 

In his "A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear," 
Professor G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, 
has this to say: 

In the effort of the psyche to foster the important organs 
and functions which it selects for its special care, organic 
defect may be compensated by excess of nervous activity. 
Indeed, most compensations are in the psychic though not 
necessarily in the conscious field. No one is perfect, and 



78 YOUR INNER SELF 

hence compensation is necessary for all. It makes for, 
if indeed it does not make, consciousness itself. Those 
organs and functions which the psyche cannot directly or 
indirectly control decay or become stigmata. Where 
the brain fails to establish a compensatory system we have 
all the hosts of neuroses and psychoses. The existence 
of sub- or abnormal organs or functions always brings 
Janet's sense of incompleteness or insufficiency, and this 
arouses a countervailing impulsion to be complete and 
efficient which those to whom nature gave lives of balanced 
harmony do not feel. The ideal goal is always to be a 
whole man or woman in mind and body, and this may crop 
out in the childish wishes that are sometimes fulfilled in 
dreams, in the ambition of the boy who aches to be a man, 
and in general in the desire to overcome all defects and to 
evolve a full-rounded, mature, powerful, and well-balanced 
personality. To illustrate, each bilateral organ compen- 
sates for defect in the other, one sense for another, like 
touch for sight in the blind. Mozart had an imperfectly 
developed ear; Beethoven had otosclerosis; Demosthenes 
stammered and, as if mythology had recognized this law, 
many of the ancient gods were defective. Odin had but 
one eye; Tyre, one hand; Vulcan was lame; Vidar dumb. 
So, too, the ugly Socrates made himself a beautiful soul. 
A man with a weak digestion becomes a dietetic expert 
in battling with fate. Little men walk straight, tall men 
stoop. Handsome men are superficial. A subnormal eye 
intensifies the visual psyche. . . . Very much of the 
total energy of all of us and still more of that of neurotics 
and psychotics is spent in developing and using devices of 
concealment of diseases and defects. Thus often the 
higher protective and defensive mechanisms come to do 
the work of the subnormal function even better than it 
would do it. Conversely, compensation has its limits and 



SAFETY DEVICES 79 

when it breaks down we have anxiety, the most compre- 
hensive of all fears and the alpha and omega of psychiatry, 
the degree of which is inversely as the ability to realize 
the life-wish of self-maximization. 



Interesting as these theories of organ inferi- 
ority are and that peculiarities of thinking can 
often be explained and cured on such a basis, 
still more wonderful, perhaps, is the converse of 
such phenomena — cases where psychic processes 
(complexes) give rise to organic defects where 
no demonstrable anatomical disease exists. 

I am referring to the Conversion symptoms 
which one finds in cases of true hysteria. Here 
we may find total blindness or paralysis or some 
other symptom although every part of the eye 
is intact and normal or, in the case of paralyzed 
arms, the bones, muscles, joints, and nerves fail 
to reveal structural changes. 

The mental mechanisms here are of a defense 
reaction variety. The complex, being unable 
to reenter consciousness and make its demands 
known symbolically, transfers itself to an or- 
ganic member. Proper and prompt psycho- 
analysis can often restore such patients com- 
pletely. 

Two other mental safety valves should be 



80 YOUR INNER SELF 

mentioned here for purposes of completion — the 
Dream and the process known as Sublimation. 
The dream will be discussed in the two succeed- 
ing chapters while sublimation will be reserved 
for the very end. 



Chapter VIII 

THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE 

OF 

Historical Discussion — The Unfulfilled 
Wish — Value of the Dream — Childhood 
Dreams — Adult Dreams — Underlying and 
Precipitating Causes — Dream Symbols — 
Manifest and Latent Contents 

Nothing in the entire field of interpretative 
psychology yields quite the fascination one finds 
in the study of dreams. Although the dream is 
often commented upon by the uninitiate as being 
foolish and senseless, its scientific investigation 
has yielded perhaps more valuable data about 
the workings of the inner self than any other 
single source. 

Ancient peoples had a superstitious reverence 
for dreams, and the old soothsayers, who were 
regularly numbered among the entourage of a 
reigning monarch, practised a highly respected 
calling. Their explanations of dreams were 
looked upon as amounting to divine prognosti- 

81 



82 YOUR INNER SELF; 

cations and not infrequently wars were begun 
and national policies determined upon because 
such and such a dream was interpreted to mean 
that a certain course should be pursued. It was 
its supposed prophetic characteristic that lent 
the dream a fictitious value. 

In discussing dreams in "A General Intro- 
duction to Psychoanalysis/' Freud says: 

As far as we know, all ancient peoples attached great 
importance to dreams and considered them of practical 
value. They drew omens for the future from dreams, 
sought premonitions in them. In those days, to the 
Greeks and all Orientals, a campaign without dream 
interpreters must have been as impossible as a campaign 
without an aviation scout to-day. When Alexander the 
Great undertook his campaign of conquests, the most 
famous dream interpreters were in attendance. The city 
of Tyrus, which was then still situated on an island, put 
up so fierce a resistance that Alexander considered the idea 
of raising the siege. Then he dreamed one night of a 
satyr dancing as if in triumph; and when he laid his dream 
before his interpreters he received the information that the 
victory over the city had been announced to him. He 
ordered the attack and took Tyrus. Among the Etrus- 
cans and the Romans other methods of discovering the 
future were in use, but the interpretation of dreams was 
practised and esteemed during the entire Hellenic-Roman 
period. Of the literature dealing with the topic at least 
the chief work has been preserved to us, namely, the book 
of Artemidoros of Daldis, who is supposed to have lived 
during the lifetime of the Emperor Hadrian. How it 



DREAMS 83 

happened subsequently that the art of dream interpre- 
tation was lost and the dream fell into discredit, I cannot 
tell you. Enlightenment cannot have had much part in 
it, for the Dark Ages faithfully preserved things far more 
absurd than the ancient dream interpretation. The fact 
is, the interest in dreams gradually deteriorated into super- 
stition, and could assert itself only among the ignorant. 

The literature of dreams is an extensive one. 
Probably the first to treat the subject scientifi- 
cally was Aristotle. Since then hundreds of 
scientific and pseudo-scientific treatises have 
been written, a few even working along the lines 
of our modern conceptions. It remained for 
Sigmund Freud, however, to make an exhaustive 
investigation of the dream, and his " Interpre- 
tation of Dreams/ 5 first formulated in 1899, 
established a landmark in this branch of psy- 
chology. 

It is interesting to note that in 1911, in his 
preface to the third edition of this work, Freud 
stated that his "sexual theories/ 5 especially as 
regards dreams and the psychoneuroses, had 
gradually been forced upon him because of 
deeper and wider study. It is these very sex 
theories — according to their author, the product 
of his riper thought and research — that have 
been most attacked by critics. The reader must 
remember, however, that, as mentioned in a 



84 YOUR INNER SELF 

preceding chapter, sex must not be taken in a 
purely literal sense nor must it be confused with 
the sensual. Furthermore, should the reader 
pursue his studies of psychoanalysis and read 
original works of Freud and other continental 
authors, he should keep in mind the fact that 
Europeans talk of sex matters with much more 
freedom than we do in America. Psycho- 
analysis only incidentally deals with the grossly 
sexual at all. 

I have enlarged upon Freud's contribution to 
psychology in his dream interpretation because 
in this remarkable book he has developed the 
technique of psychoanalysis. Not alone did it 
clear away the mysticism shrouding the whole 
subject of dreams but it laid down fundamental 
principles by which types of mental disturbance, 
hitherto inaccessible, were made capable of treat- 
ment, and even cured. 

According to Freud, the dream always ex- 
presses an Unfulfilled Wish in waking life. The 
prophetic theory of the dream has long since been 
discarded except in so far as a wish, being some- 
thing that looks toward the future, may con- 
tain a warning for the dreamer. Indeed it may, 
through a mere coincidence, prove actually 
prophetic. 



DREAMS 85 

The dream, then, stands for thwarted desires, 
things that the individual has been deprived of 
or disappointed in in the world of reality. In 
psychoanalytic parlance, the dream embodies 
complexes, complexes being nothing more than 
suppressed desires and wishes that have been 
submerged into the unconscious. To state it 
in still another way, the things that conscious- 
ness is unable to express or fulfil in the outside 
world are repressed; these repressions, if they 
mean a great deal to the individual, will re- 
appear at night, during the sleep state, in the 
form of a dream. 

The dream is a safety valve. Like the safety 
valve on a boiler, it permits steam to escape and 
prevents an explosion. If people did not dream, 
their mental maladjustments would be pro- 
portionally increased. Dreaming, therefore, al- 
though it betrays the presence of complexes — 
from which, to be sure, no one is absolutely free — 
is of actual advantage to the dreamer. 

People claim sometimes that they do not 
dream. The probability is that they do dream 
but do not remember their dreams. Since 
everybody has complexes of some sort it is more 
than likely that everybody dreams. 

Freud stresses the advantageous character of 



86 YOUR INNER SELF 

the dream in his "Introduction to Psycho- 
analysis/' when he says: 

The dream is not a disturber of sleep, as calumny says, 
but a guardian of sleep, whose duty it is to quell dis- 
turbances. It is true, we think we would have slept better 
if we had not dreamt, but here we are wrong; as a matter of 
fact, we would not have slept at all without the help of the 
dream. That we have slept so soundly is due to the dream 
alone. It could not help disturbing us slightly, just as the 
watchman often cannot avoid making a little noise while 
he drives away the rioters who would awaken us with their 
noise. 

In children one finds the clearest and best 
examples of the dream's expression of unfulfilled 
wishes. The child's life is simple compared to 
that of an adult. Accordingly, libidinous thwart- 
ings are of a more simple type, hence the unful- 
filled wishes as expressed in their dreams are 
likewise clearly and simply expressed, with the 
minimum of disguise. 

A child of four who had asked for a doll, 
dreamed that the doll was in her nursery. On 
the following morning she cried when the new 
doll was not actually to be found. 

A poor boy of six dreamed a few days before 
Christmas that Santa Claus got stuck in the 
chimney and had to leave behind a large part of 
the toys destined for other children. 



DREAMS 87 

Freud relates a dream of a little girl of three 
and a quarter years who had experienced her 
first boat ride on a lake and, being reluctant to 
leave the boat at the landing, had cried bitterly. 
The next morning she said, "Last night I rode on 
the lake." 

To understand children's dreams does not 
require any special knowledge of psychoana- 
lytic technique. Happenings of the previous 
day of the child's life usually give the clue to the 
wish element expressed in the dream. 

On the other hand, to interpret and find the 
wish element in adult dreams is often a laborious 
and painstaking process. Besides, adult dreams 
are often so jumbled, involved, and sketchy, that 
only an expert in analysis can decipher them. 

As is the case with children the dreams of 
adults can often be traced to some recent happen- 
ing during waking life that seems to have started 
the dream off. A person walking along the 
street hears the whir of an engine, and looking 
up sees an aeroplane above the house-tops. 
That night this person dreams that an aeroplane 
of peculiar design — long, tortuous like a snake, 
and made up of many segments — squeezed itself 
through the bedroom window, perched i tself on the 
foot-board of the bed, and talked in Esperanto. 



88 YOUR INNER SELF 

Had a child seen this aeroplane it would very 
likely have dreamed of seeing it again, more or 
less as it actually appeared. The adult, how- 
ever, although also dreaming about the aero- 
plane, sees it in dream life as a peculiar, bizarre, 
and distorted monster-like object that has 
marvellous properties of adaptability and talks 
a suggested universal language. 

To explain the dream by saying that an aero- 
plane had been seen by the dreamer the same day 
really explains very little. Why does not the 
dreamer dream about the aeroplane unchanged 
as a child would have done? Why, also, does 
the aeroplane turn in the dream into a living, 
talking monster? Why, furthermore, should he 
dream of an aeroplane at all after this particular 
experience, though he did not when he saw them 
on previous occasions? Why, also, does not 
every person who shares the experience with 
the dreamer also dream of aeroplanes that night 
and in exactly the same way? 

Although it is true that some especially vivid 
or unusual occurrence of waking life may be 
the immediate cause of a dream, there must be 
also an underlying cause for the dream embody- 
ing the wish-fulfilling element. 

We speak of an Underlying Cause and a Precipi- 



DREAMS 89 

fating Cause for every dream. The difference 
may be likened to the two main causes of the 
French Revolution. The precipitating cause of 
the French Revolution was the storming of the 
Bastille prison; the underlying cause was a deep- 
seated distrust and fear of the nobility on the 
part of the bourgeoisie for many years before 
that. Without the background of class hatred, 
the destruction of that famous prison might not 
have precipitated that merciless inquisition. 

So, also, in the case of dreams. Something in 
the environment which has made a vivid im- 
pression upon consciousness precipitates the 
dream, but the form which the dream takes, the 
disguises which that particular thing assumes, 
indicate the complex in the unconscious which 
constitutes the unfulfilled wish. Like prisoners 
of war these complexes are forever trying to 
escape from the unconscious and express them- 
selves in the conscious. Suddenly an oppor- 
tunity presents itself, something impresses con- 
sciousness which the complex realizes can be 
used as a disguise. When this something — the 
happening of the waking day — is stored away at 
night in the unconscious, the complex, realizing 
that this something is not obnoxious to con- 
sciousness as it itself has been, makes use of the 



9 o YOUR INNER SELF 

disguise (in the example cited, aeroplane) and 
escapes into consciousness, just as a prisoner of 
war might hide under a load of hay and cross the 
frontier undetected. 

The frontier dividing the conscious and the un- 
conscious is, as we have learned, guarded by the 
psychic censor. If the original repression has 
been powerful and the complex is particularly 
unwelcome in consciousness, the complex must 
needs disguise itself very cleverly in order to get 
by the censor. Therefore, when a dream is ex- 
ceedingly mixed up, melodramatic, or absurd, 
the complex behind the dream must also have 
been very obnoxious to consciousness if so much 
disguise had to take place in order to elude the 
dream censor. 

The interpretation of dreams then largely be- 
comes a problem of interpreting disguises. These 
censored disguises are called Dream Symbols. 

Although certain symbols often mean the same 
thing, even when appearing in the dreams of 
different persons, interpreting dreams by means 
of commonly accepted meanings of symbols 
would be both a hazardous and unscientific pro- 
cedure. For example, when a woman dreams 
of a basket of fruit, though the complex wish is 
very probably motherhood (basket being the 



DREAMS 91 

symbol of womb and fruit of foetus) this interpre- 
tation of the symbol in the individual under 
consideration might be an exception to the 
general rule and prove incorrect. 

Careful and accurate analysis demands that 
all dream symbols be interpreted without refer- 
ence to their meaning in other cases. For this 
the so-called "association method'' is employed 
which will be discussed in the following chapter. 
Dream symbols and all other kinds of symbols 
are a most interesting study and much work has 
been done along these lines. It must not be 
forgotten that all language is symbolic and that 
the interpretation of symbols in a dream is noth- 
ing more than the translation of the language 
of the dream. 

The dream symbols most commonly recog- 
nized — standard symbols — are interesting. The 
works of Freud and others treat the subject of 
symbolism exhaustively. Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, 
in "The Technique of Psychoanalysis," enum- 
erates a few of the standard symbols as follows: 

The patient's own body is most frequently spoken of as 
a house. Nakedness of die body is frequently indicated 
by clothing, uniforms, draperies, hangings, nets, etc. . . . 
The male body is symbolized by flat things, the female 
body by irregular ones, mounds, hills, rolling landscapes, 



92 YOUR INNER SELF 

etc. . . . Birth symbolisms centre about water; going 
in or coming out; saving people, animals, objects from the 
water. Death wishes are represented by reduction of the 
libido, going into the dark, going away, on journeys, on the 
railroad, etc. 

Again I would like to emphasize that the 
interpretation of dreams by reference to the 
meaning of standard symbols is a dangerous 
practice. Every dream should be analyzed on 
its own merits, and the personality and ante- 
cedents of the dreamer himself must always be 
taken into account. 

In contrast with the simplicity of children's 
dreams the complexity of adult dreams re- 
quires still further elucidation. 

In practically every dream one is able to 
recognize two meanings or contents: a Manifest 
Content and a Latent Content. 

The manifest content is the subject that the 
dream is evidently about. In the case of the 
aeroplane dream it is, of course, an aeroplane. 
The underlying complex which is responsible 
for the aeroplane symbol constitutes the latent 
content. 

Children's dreams are all manifest content. 
In adult dreams, the manifest content is of 
relatively slight importance as compared to the 



DREAMS 93 

meanings latent in the unconscious complexes 
which are striving to express themselves. It 
often takes hours of analysis to arrive at the 
latent content. But it is the latent content that 
must be sought out by every means available. 

It is not uncommon for a patient to present a 
dream for analysis and say, "You can't make me 
believe, Doctor, that this absurd stuff that I 
have dreamt expresses an unfulfilled wish.' 3 
The absurdity usually lies in the fact that the 
patient has overlooked the all-important point 
that the manifest content does not express the 
unfulfilled wish and that it is only a symbol of it, 
sometimes disguised in such a way that it por- 
trays just the opposite of the real, hidden mean- 
ing which the dream censor did not dare let pass 
through. 

A young lady of twenty, with everything in 
life to live for, related a dream of the previous 
night which she had decided could not possibly 
be true. She had dreamt that she was lying in a 
casket dead. 

I agreed with her that she probably had no 
actual desire, consciously or unconsciously, to die 
and urged her to tell me all she could remember 
about the dream. Miss X. stated that in her 
mind's eye she could see herself in the casket, 



94 YOUR INNER SELF 

that the room was banked with flowers, that it 
was crowded with mourners, and that the min- 
ister preached a very eulogistic sermon about 
her. When asked to fix her attention on the 
various incidents just related and to tell me what 
then came into her mind she suddenly remarked 
that there was one thing she found she had over- 
looked. She now remembered that one of the 
mourners, a middle-aged man, in passing the 
casket had said, "How beautiful she looks !" and 
that he had stooped over and kissed her. 

The part of the dream which the patient had 
forgotten constituted the real repression of her 
consciousness and gave the clue to the un- 
conscious complex responsible for it. By fur- 
ther analysis it was established that Miss X. had 
secretly fallen in love with the middle-aged man 
of the dream, a friend of her father's and mar- 
ried. Her libidinous strivings toward him had, 
of course, been held taboo by her consciousness, 
which was refined and conventional. Repression 
had taken place, but the thwarted love complex 
had managed to escape from the unconscious and 
had expressed itself in the dream in a highly 
censored and symbolized form. In short, in 
order to rouse an emotional response in the 
object of her affection, she had to be dead. In 






DREAMS 95 

this case the manifest content pointed to death 
while the latent content revealed love. 

Dream psychology is a fascinating study but 
it is often extremely difficult and complicated. 
In this small volume only the outstanding points 
can be touched upon. The next chapter will 
deal in greater detail with the interpretation of 
dreams. 



Chapter IX 

INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 

The Dream-Work — Condensation — Dis- 
placement — Dramatization — Association 
Method — Resistances — Reaction Time — An- 
alysis of Sample Dreams 

As a rule, dreams are highly involved and 
considerable explanation is required to make 
clear the methods by which their symbolic 
hieroglyphics can be deciphered to spell out the 
story of unconscious desires. 

In the transmutation from unconscious mecha- 
nisms (latent) into manifest dream material, 
marked changes take place. This transmu- 
tation Freud calls the Dream-Work. And he 
stresses the point that the reverse process, work- 
ing backward from the manifest dream to its 
latent content, is the crucial task set in dream 
interpretation. It is this last that constitutes 
the true investigation of the inner self. 

Freud recognizes three main methods through 
which the dream-work is carried out. One is 

9 6 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 97 

Condensation, another Displacement, and a third 
Dramatization. 

Condensation is readily understandable. It 
simply means that the dream composes into a 
small compass unconscious material that may be 
quite diversified and elaborate in its original de- 
tails. The dream is a great time-saver. It 
flashes upon the visual screen of the mind scenes 
and incidents which are condensed and shortened 
out of all proportion to what would occur in 
waking life. Only the salient features, the 
'purple patches/' are selected for portrayal, and 
these often with astonishing vividness while 
connecting links are largely omitted. Hence, 
though it may take only a few lines to describe a 
dream in words on paper, a dozen pages may be 
required to give the full interpretation. 

Displacement is not so easy to explain. It 
demonstrates the particular function of the 
dream (psychic) censor. Emphasis is placed 
upon happenings in the dream that are relatively 
unessential to its meaning, while important, 
highly symbolistic, repressed material is sub- 
ordinated and passed over hurriedly. Dis- 
placement also accounts for the fantastic ab- 
surdities which so often appear in dreams. It is 
largely through the mechanism of displacement 



9 8 YOUR INNER SELF 

that the psychic censor is able to beguile con- 
sciousness and so keep the dreamer from awaken- 
ing. 

Through the process of dramatization the 
dream-work transforms unconscious thoughts 
(complexes) into a more or less coherent suc- 
cession of mental pictures. There results a sort 
of picture-play of thoughts — the representation 
of mental activity (thoughts) by visual images. 
Sometimes we feel ourselves actually a part of 
the dream, but as a rule we are outside observers 
watching a "passing show' of which, however, 
we are ourselves always the central figure. 
Upon awakening, we are aware that the experi- 
ence through which we have passed, though 
vividly real at the time, has been somehow 
different from what the same series of happenings 
would have been if experienced actually when 
awake. We feel as if we had been watching a 
motion picture in which we are ourselves act- 
ing. 

We have learned that the brain is a mecha- 
nism akin to other machines and that the product 
of its workings, the thoughts, are arranged in 
some sort of orderly way. This orderly arrange- 
ment is brought about by means of nerve tissue — 
delicate, microscopic strands known as "associ- 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 99 

ation fibres" — that run in every direction and 
link all thought processes together. There is no 
such thing as a single, solitary thought, off and 
apart by itself. Every thought is connected up 
with every other thought by means of association 
fibres in the same way that any one telephone 
instrument is connected up somehow — no matter 
how roundabout or devious the way — with every 
other telephone instrument in a city. 

If a person fixes his attention upon any word or 
any particular thought and then lets his mind 
drift along in an aimless fashion, without trying 
to direct it, one thought will suggest another, 
now quickly, now more slowly, for just about 
as long as one cares to continue the experiment. 
This means that the direction of attention is 
travelling along association fibres. 

This Association Method has been a fruitful 
means of exploring the unconscious. The princi- 
ple is regularly employed in interpreting dreams 
and its use has also been of value in the detection 
of crime. 

Let me call your attention to still another 
mechanism or characteristic of mental activity 
which should be taken into account. I refer to 
the so-called Resistances that appear in the 
course of an association test or dream analysis 



ioo YOUR INNER SELF 

and which have such vital significance. Perhaps 
this can best be illustrated by an example. 

Suppose I start with the word house and trace 
along the association of ideas it suggests. House 
makes me think of brick, then red; red suggests 
a red hat I saw a woman wearing on the street 
yesterday. Following this there come into my 
mind one after the other dress, window-dresser, 
Christmas display in the stores, and then the 
name Santa Claus. Here I find myself hesitat- 
ing. My thinking, my free flow of associations, 
is halted. I return to the word Santa Claus and 
concentrate upon it. I find I have difficulty in 
getting away from that word. My stream of 
thought seems to have balked at some obstacle 
and that obstacle, the harmless name of old 
Santa Claus. I try again; I focus all my at- 
tention upon the word. Presently I seem to see 

his long white beard; then I see his face; then ! 

Ah! I know why I hesitated before! I recall 
that at Christmas I had put on a Santa Claus 
mask to entertain a party of children. Instead, 
I frightened one of them into an hysterical 
attack and I felt upset not only because the 
serenity of the Christmas gathering had been 
disturbed but also because I realized I had 
shown lack of foresight. "A fine exhibition of 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 101 

stupidity for a specialist in nervous diseases/ 5 
I thought. 

Psychologically speaking, I halted at the word 
Santa Claus because I had a resistance at this 
point concerning that word. More than that, 
the resistance was due to emotional repression — 
my chagrin over my stupid behaviour at a 
Christmas celebration. I had forgotten the 
incident the day after it occurred, but although 
my consciousness had freed itself of its em- 
barrassment, the suppressed incident was still 
lurking in the unconscious. Then later (to- 
night as I write these lines, fully three weeks 
later), starting with a train of thought on the 
word house, my stream of thinking proceeded 
from one association to another (along associ- 
ation fibres) until it happened upon the 
emotional complex (the Christmas incident) 
where it lay in hiding. Immediately auto- 
protective mechanisms came into play and my 
psychic censor tried to prevent the incident 
from becoming conscious again, recalling the 
distress it had originally caused me. This 
accounted for my inability to continue the 
associations. My thinking got jammed. I 
offered resistance to giving up my secret. 

As I mentioned above, word association tests 



102 YOUR INNER SELF 

are sometimes given for purposes of crime 
detection. In such cases a long list of words is 
used — perhaps a hundred — and the suspect is 
asked to reply to each word as it is called out 
with the first word or thought that enters his 
mind. If the word book is called, he might 
reply with paper; to the word chair he might 
answer table; to white, snow; to tree, green; to 
beautiful, ugly; and so on through the list. 

Now if the prisoner is suspected of arson and 
it is believed that the fire was started in the 
cellar, the examiner interpolates in the list 
of what might be called "indifferent" words, 
certain words suggesting the crime. Instead, 
therefore, of giving the words book, chair, white, 
tree, and beautiful, one after the other, he might 
insert the word cellar between chair and white, 
and fire after beautiful. The list would then 
read: book, chair, cellar, white, tree, beautiful, 
fire. 

The words on such a list are often spoken of as 
"stimulus words' and the words given in reply 
by the suspect as "responses." The time that 
elapses between the giving of the stimulus word 
and the response is called the Reaction Time. 

It has been found that every person has an 
average reaction time and if he be tested out 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 103 

on one of the standard lists of one hundred words, 
such as the Woodworth-Wells or the Kent- 
Rosanoflflist, the most usual response will require 
a half second, or one fifth of a second, or some 
other time-length. In a way, the shorter the 
reaction time the more alert is the mentality, yet 
no individual has exactly the same reaction time 
for every stimulus word, although the majority 
may be identical. 

But more interesting and important still is the 
fact that when a stimulus word is given that deals 
with emotional processes — that is, is connected 
by association fibres with complexes — the reac- 
tion time is markedly increased. 

Thus, in the case of our arson suspect, should 
his average reaction time to the indifferent, non- 
emotional words, be one fifth of a second, his 
reaction time to such words as cellar and fire 
might be several seconds. Consciously or un- 
consciously he would grasp that he is caught 
revealing emotion, "giving himself away. ,: The 
passage of these emotions would consume time 
which the stop-watch of the examiner does not 
fail to record. Accordingly, under the grilling of 
what might be termed a psychological "third 
degree,'" the prisoner either clears himself of the 
arson accusation, or unwittingly accuses himself, 



io 4 YOUR INNER SELF 

or at least puts his innocence in question. The 
presumption is that were he entirely innocent 
(and, I might add, ignorant) of the actual facts of 
how the building was set afire, his average re- 
action time of one fifth of a second would follow 
the words cellar and fire just as it did the other 
words of the list. Hesitation, display of 
emotion, lengthened reaction time — all point to 
complexes. In short, they betray resistances. 

To return to the subject of dreams, Andre 
Tridon, the author of "Psychoanalysis — Its 
History, Theory, and Practice," relates a dream 
he himself had, and gives its interpretation. As 
he says, "The way in which our dream seeks 
solutions for mental conflicts is well illustrated 
by one of my dreams. ,: In this example it does 
not take much analysis to discover the wish 
fulfilment in the manifest content itself. The 
quotations that follow are in Doctor Tridon's own 
words : 

One night before the date set for a lecture which I was to 
deliver on a rather delicate subject, likely to involve me in 
difficulties, and which I would have preferred not to de- 
liver, I had the following dream: 

I was seated on the stage at Carnegie Hall where an 
enormous audience had gathered to hear me. The chair- 
man was busy making various announcements. I looked 
at my feet and discovered that I wore bed slippers. I felt 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 105 

embarrassed at that undignified detail of my toilet and for 
a second or so planned to go home and return in more 
conventional attire. I finally decided to stay. Then, 
as the chairman was beginning to announce me, I looked 
for my lecture notes, and could not find them. I made 
an effort to remember the outline of my lecture and could 
not recall anything whatever. I then decided to dis- 
appear without warning the chairman. As I emerged into 
the hall, I met two women I knew and felt the need of 
explaining my action. I explained to them that the heat 
was nauseating me and that I would have to go home. A 
few steps further down the hall I met a physician who 
looked at me and said with deep compassion, "The poor 
fellow is very sick." Then I began to vomit and went 
home. 

The dream offered me several excuses for breaking my 
engagement. My appearance was undignified (bed slip- 
pers), I was not sufficiently prepared, I was sick. I se- 
cured a friendly physician's testimonial as to my physical 
condition. 

The choice of sickness (nausea) made by the dream, 
is the more interesting, as hysterical vomiting is often 
brought about by a more or less unconscious unwilling- 
ness to perform an unpleasant task. 

While the dream was, in its general make-up, an "anx- 
iety dream/' still, for the time being, it had solved the 
problem raised by that unpleasant lecture engagement and 
had replaced one form of mental anguish by one infinitely 
more bearable. 

My self-protection urge wished me to cancel the engage- 
ment. The dream cancelled it, at the same time giving 
plenty of satisfaction to my ego urge: Carnegie Hall, one 
of the largest halls in New York, where, by the way, I have 
never spoken, a large audience, and finally humiliation 



106 YOUR INNER SELF 

avoided, thanks to my physician's statement as to my 
mental condition, which " saved my face." 

I may add that at the time I was expecting the particular 
physician who appeared in the dream to perform a similar 
service for me. One of the two women was a hospital 
nurse I had seen the day before (an actual event from my 
previous waking state). 

Finally the dream-work did not simply give me advice 
as to means of breaking my engagement but dramatized 
the breaking of that engagement. 

Resistances appear regularly in the interpre- 
tation of dreams. In order to analyze dreams 
one takes the important parts, the salient fea- 
tures, of the dream and then asks the dreamer to 
think aloud and tell everything that comes into 
his mind (association method). Sometimes he 
may continue associating for a considerable time 
before any hesitancy or emotion displays itself. 
When he does (as in the case of my own associ- 
ations with house and the hesitancy at Santa 
Claus) it means that a complex has been reached. 
Studying and correlating these complexes inter- 
prets the dream and brings to light, into the 
conscious, the unconscious, suppressed unful- 
filled wishes. 

Shortly after beginning an analysis a patient 
dreamed that she was standing in the room of a 
castle watching a group of men sitting at a table. 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 107 

These men wore long, black dominoes and masks, 
and seemed to be discussing what sentence 
should be pronounced upon her. Suddenly one 
man arose who was not masked. He beckoned 
to the patient and mysteriously opened a secret 
door in a side wall which led to the outside, 
where a boat lay as if in waiting. As her 
rescuer bowed her into this boat it sped off* as if 
by magic, and soon the castle was lost to view. 
At this juncture the patient awoke with a feeling 
of happiness. 

By means of free association it was found that 
the room of the castle symbolized my former 
consulting room in New York City which was 
heavily panelled in oak; the masked figures 
around the table stood for the patient's symp- 
toms which were harassing her; the unmasked 
figure that arose and rescued her was myself, the 
analyst; while the secret door in the wall was 
psychoanalysis itself. In other words, the un- 
fulfilled wish symbolized by this dream meant 
that the patient was hoping I might cure her 
of her ailments by means of psychoanalysis which 
up to that time in the course of treatment was 
still a mysterious subject — a secret door to which 
I alone held the "open sesame. " 

In concluding this chapter I will add two 



108 YOUR INNER SELF 

dreams related by Freud in "A General Intro- 
duction to Psychoanalysis/ 3 His own interpre- 
tation of these dreams is also included: 

I. On July 13, 1910, toward morning, I dreamed that 
I was bicycling down a street in Tubingen, when a brown 
Dachshund tore after me and caught me by the heel. A bit 
further on I get off, seat myself on a step, and begin to beat 
the beast, which has clenched its teeth tight. (J feel no dis- 
comfort from the biting or the whole scene 1) Two elderly 
ladies are sitting opposite me and watching me with grins on 
their faces. Then I wake up and, as so often happens to me, 
the whole dream becomes perfectly clear to me in this moment 
of transition to the waking state. 

Symbols are of little use in this case. The dreamer, 
however, informs us, "I lately fell in love with a girl, just 
from seeing her on the street, but had no means of becom- 
ing acquainted with her. The most pleasant means 
might have been the Dachshund, since I am a great lover 
of animals, and also felt that the girl was in sympathy with 
this characteristic. ,> He also adds that he repeatedly 
interfered with great dexterity in the fights of scuffling dogs 
and frequently to the great amazement of the spectators. 
Thus we learn that the girl, who pleased him, was always 
accompanied by this particular dog. This girl, however, 
was disregarded in the manifest dream, and there remained 
only the dog which he associates with her. Perhaps the 
elderly ladies wjio simpered at him took the place of the 
girl. The remainder of what he tells us is not enough to 
explain this point. Riding a bicycle in the dream is a 
direct repetition of the remembered situation. He had 
never met the girl with the dog except when he was on his 
bicycle. 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 109 

II. "Father is dead, but has been exhumed and looks 
badly. He goes on living, and the dreamer does everything to 
prevent him from noticing that fact " Then the dream goes 
on to other things, apparently irrelevant. 

The father is dead, that we kno\y. That he was ex- 
humed is not really true, nor is the truth of the rest of the 
dream important. But the dreamer tells us that when he 
came back from his father's funeral, one of his teeth began 
to ache. He wanted to treat his tooth according to the 
Jewish precept, "If thy tooth offend thee, pluck it out," 
and betook himself to the dentist. But the latter said, 
"One does not simply pull a tooth out, one must have 
patience with it. I shall inject something to kill the nerve. 
Come again in three days and then I will take it out." 

"This 'taking it out'," says the dreamer suddenly, "is 
the exhuming.' ' 

Is the dreamer right? It does not correspond exactly, 
only approximately, for the tooth is not taken out, but 
something that has died off is taken out of it. But after 
our other experiences we are probably safe in believing that 
the dream-work is capable of such inaccuracies. It ap- 
pears that the dreamer condensed, fused into one, his 
dead father and the tooth that was killed but retained. 
No wonder, then, that in the manifest dream something 
senseless results, for it is impossible for everything that is 
said of the tooth to fit the father. What is it that serves as 
something intermediate between tooth and father and 
makes this condensation possible? 

This interpretation must be correct, however, for the 
dreamer says that he is acquainted with the saying that 
when one dreams of losing a tooth it means that one is go- 
ing to lose a member of his family. 

We know that this popular interpretation is incorrect, 
or at least is correct only in a scurrilous sense. For that 



no YOUR INNER SELF 

reason it is all the more surprising to find this theme thus 
touched upon in the background of other portions of the 
dream content. 

Without any further urging, the dreamer now begins to 
tell of his father's illness and death as well as of his re- 
lations with him. The father was sick a long time, and 
his care and treatment cost him, the son, much money. 
And yet it was never too much for him, he never grew im- 
patient, never wished it might end soon. He boasts of his 
true Jewish piety toward his father, of rigid adherence to 
the Jewish precepts. But are you not struck by a con- 
tradiction in the thoughts of the dream? He had identi- 
fied tooth with father. As to the tooth he wanted to 
follow the Jewish precept that carries out its own judg- 
ment, "pull it out if it causes pain and annoyance." He 
had also been anxious to follow the precept of the law with 
regard to his father, which in this case, however, tells him 
to disregard trouble and expense, to take all the burdens 
upon himself and to let no hostile intent arise toward the 
object which causes the pain. Would not the agreement 
be far more compelling if he had really developed feelings 
toward his father similar to those about his sick tooth; that 
is, had he wished that a speedy death should put an end to 
that superfluous, painful, and expensive existence? 

I do not doubt that this was really his attitude toward 
his father during the latter's extended illness, and that his 
boastful assurances of filial piety were intended to distract 
his attention from these recollections. Under such cir- 
cumstances, the death-wish directed toward the parent 
generally becomes active, and disguises itself in phrases of 
sympathetic consideration such as, "It would really be a 
blessed release for him." But note well that we have here 
overcome an obstacle in the latent dream thoughts them- 
selves. The first part of these thoughts was surely un- 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF in 

conscious only temporarily, that is to say, during the 
dream-work, while the inimical feelings toward the father 
might have been permanently unconscious, dating perhaps 
from childhood, occasionally slipping into consciousness 
shyly and in disguise, during his father's illness. We can 
assert this with even greater certainty of other latent 
thoughts which have made unmistakable contributions 
to the dream content. To be sure, none of these inimical 
feelings toward the father can be discovered in the dream. 
But when we search a childhood history for the root of 
such enmity toward the father, we recollect that fear of the 
father arises because the latter, even in the earliest years, 
opposes the boy's sex activities, just as he is ordinarily 
forced to oppose them again, after puberty, for social 
motives* This relation to the father applies also to our 
dreamer; there had been mixed with his love for him much 
respect and fear, having its source in early sex intimidation. 
From the onanism complex we can now explain the 
other parts of the manifest dream. He looks badly does, 
to be sure, allude to another remark of the dentist, that it 
looks badly to have a tooth missing in that place; but at 
the same time it refers to the "looking badly" by which 
the young man betrayed, or feared to betray, his excessive 
sexual activity during puberty. It was not without 
lightening his own heart that the dreamer transposed the 
bad looks from himself to his father in the manifest con- 
tent, an inversion of the dream-work with which you are 
familiar. He goes on living since then> disguises itself with 
the wish to have him alive again as well as with the promise 
of the dentist that the tooth will be preserved. A very 
subtle phrase, however, is the following: "The dreamer 
does everything to prevent him {the father) from noticing the 
fact" a phrase calculated to lead us to conclude that he is 
dead. Yet the only meaningful conclusion is again drawn 



ii2 YOUR INNER SELF 

from the onanism complex, where it is a matter of course 
for the young man to do everything in order to hide his sex 
life from his father. Remember, in conclusion, that we 
were constantly forced to interpret the so-called tooth- 
ache dreams as dreams dealing with the subject of onanism 
and the punishment that is feared. 

You now see how this incomprehensible dream came 
into being, by the creation of a remarkable and misleading 
condensation, by the fact that all the ideas emerge from 
the midst of the latent thought process, and by the 
creation of ambiguous substitute formations for the most 
hidden and, at the time, most remote of these thoughts. 



The latter of the two dreams that Freud ana- 
lyzes may seem involved and, perhaps, the inter- 
pretation somewhat obscure in places. Several 
re-readings may be necessary before it becomes 
clear. 

It is for these very reasons that I have selected 
this dream and its interpretation. It empha- 
sizes the psychological insight that is necessary 
for correct dream analysis. The dream-work 
often performs its tasks only too well. The real 
inner self is most cleverly disguised. 

On the other hand, there are dreams that are 
comparatively simple to translate. The one of 
Doctor Tridon is an example. Others, again, 
require hours upon hours of the most concen- 
trated kind of thinking, backed by long experi- 



INVESTIGATING THE INNER SELF 113 

ence in the actual practice of psychoanalysis. 
Persons who have been analyzed often acquire a 
facility in interpreting their own dreams which is 
quite remarkable. Parenthetically, also, per- 
sons who claim they never dream often begin to 
dream very productively after a psychoanalysis 
is once begun. 



Chapter X 

SEX DEVELOPMENT 

Erogenous Zones— Heterosexuality— 
Homosexuality — Auto-Eroticism — Nar- 
cism — Sex Hygiene 

At several places in the preceding chapters 
attention has been drawn to the animal, primi- 
tive nature of the inner self. It is not my in- 
tention to overstress this feature, yet I wish to 
emphasize it again at this point, when opening 
the discussion of sex development, because it is 
characteristic of persons who are just beginning 
the study of psychoanalysis to be loath to accept 
this premise. 

Psychoanalysis is a science, and science is 
always impersonal and logical, aiming at insight 
into the facts of nature as they are, and not as 
we might prefer them to be. The concept of man 
as an evolutionary development from lower and 
less highly organized animal forms is not a psy- 
choanalytic hypothesis but an accredited bio- 
logical one, widely and generally accepted. 

114 



SEX DEVELOPMENT 115 

It is in harmony with this theory of man's 
origin that we find the child, practically from 
birth on, swayed by primitive and animal 
instincts (the libidinous urges). These were 
developed, it is supposed, during the process 
of evolution to safeguard the welfare of the 
individual and the race, and thus to ensure the 
continuance of this very evolutionary process. 
We conclude, therefore, that they are a most 
important feature of the prenatal equipment and 
of the racial inheritance of the young of the 
human species. 

All the knowledge the world now possesses has 
been based and built upon hypotheses, which 
were tried out by applying them to a series of 
actual problems and testing whether the so- 
lutions they afforded were logical and acceptable. 
Does the theory work? is it of wide application? 
are the vital questions. 

Not so many years ago chemical formulas were 
interpreted by means of the atomic theory. 
Since then matter has been reduced to even 
smaller proportions and the atomic theory has 
been supplanted by the so-called "ionic" — a 
question of electro-chemistry. New elements 
were discovered by the old theory that atoms 
were the smallest particles into which matter 



n6 YOUR INNER SELF 

could be divided, and the new conception of still 
smaller particles (ions) with rather different 
properties and modes of action has not upset the 
science of chemistry nor compelled it to discard 
previous discoveries. 

So it is with the comparatively recent theories 
of psychoanalysis, and particularly with the way 
analytic science interprets sex development and 
sex behaviour. Freud's original explanations 
may be correct and true or they may not. The 
fact that their boldness may shock some should 
certainly not weigh too heavily against them. 
Investigators like Adler (already referred to 
apropos of "organ inferiority") and Jung of 
the Zurich school, have already diverged some- 
what from the Freudian premises and have 
decidedly lessened the importance which Freud 
himself gives to sex. These and other side- 
hypotheses are not revolutionary, nor are they 
subversive of the earlier, Freudian theory. 
Rather they are natural outgrowths from it, 
branches of the parent tree, and integral parts of 
the main trunk. The newer theories cannot be 
justly appraised unless their relation to the 
science of analysis as a whole be taken into 
account. 

Lastly, sex must not be narrowed down to 



SEX DEVELOPMENT 117 

small limits. In its broadest sense it embraces 
the whole love-life. (v.p. 17.) 

The factors of sex development which are here 
set down may not be as Freudian as his ultra-con- 
servative followers might prefer; nevertheless, 
they are Freudian in principle, and have been 
found to be understandable and practical in 
lecture courses and in treating patients. 

Everyone accepts the fact that during the 
adolescent period — at the time of puberty — sex 
consciousness has become a factor to be reckoned 
with. What is not understood or accepted by 
everyone is that the sex instinct (reproductive 
libido) has antecedents dating back to earliest 
childhood. The sex life of the individual does 
not arise spontaneously and suddenly. It is a 
gradual development from birth, step by step, 
and year by year. To be sure, its ultimate 
potentials come to maturity and vigorous action 
at puberty when the sex life is said to begin, but 
in no sense should we think that sex is a hidden, 
dormant instinct until puberty, or that childhood 
is sexless. 

To quote from Chapter III, under the dis- 
cussion of the Infantile Period: "The child's 
mind is at first simple and crude. Wholly self- 
centred, it interprets all pleasures in terms of 



n8 YOUR INNER SELF 

bodily sensations. It accepts greedily all that is 
offered. It is above all pleasure-seeking and 
pleasure-loving. Warm food (milk) and soft, 
swaddling clothing give it a sense of well-being. 
Caresses and softly modulated words of endear- 
ment soothe it. The child's eyes sparkle with 
delight and it coos from sheer pleasure." In 
short, children are in the beginning little more 
than bundles of sensations. 

The term sensation is here used in a restricted 
sense to mean pleasure and pain derived from 
physical contact. Especially during the first 
weeks of the child's existence physical contact 
with its skin and the mucous membranes of the 
mouth and even the gastro-intestinal tract 
supply it with its most vivid sensations of 
pleasure. Although babies also derive pleasure 
sensations from seeing bright-coloured objects 
and from hearing melodious sounds, these come 
somewhat later. In fact, newly born infants 
shrink from the light. They are also deaf for the 
first twenty-four hours. and may remain so for 
several days, this defect being probably due to 
absence of air in the cavity of the middle ear. 

But the infant's sensibility to touch and taste 
begins at birth, and this sensitiveness is especially 
well marked in the lips and tongue. The same 



SEX DEVELOPMENT 119 

is true of their ability to distinguish degrees of 
hot and cold, and very young infants sometimes 
will refuse a nursing bottle that is not of an agree- 
able temperature. 

It is obvious why sensations referable to the 
lips and tongue should be present and so acute at 
birth. It is nature's way of safeguarding the 
nutrition libido — of ensuring breast feeding. 

We see, then, that one part of the skin and 
mucous membrane of the body is more highly 
sensitized than any other part even as early as 
birth. That part is the mouth. The analytic 
term for an area that is capable of giving unusual 
pleasure when stimulated (touched) is Ero- 
genous Zone. Since the mouth erogenous zone 
is the first and the most important for a number 
of years it is called a Primary Erogenous Zone. 

Freud maintains that there is a sex element — 
unconscious to the child, of course — in the suck- 
ing of the nursing period which stimulates the 
erogenous zone of the mouth. That the child 
experiences the keenest physical pleasure from 
this act and expresses its gratification in various 
ways cannot be denied. Freud himself raises the 
question whether it is justifiable to include in the 
term sexual "each and every organic enjoy- 
ment.' 3 Possibly another term might be found 



120 YOUR INNER SELF 

better suited to this particular physical pleasure. 
The chief point, however, is not the name chosen 
but the recognition of the fact that the child's 
keenest pleasures are associated with mouth 
sensations. 

Freud insists that the child is not sexless. His 
own arguments are here appended, the passages 
being again selected from "A General Intro- 
duction to Psychoanalysis": 

You have on the whole gained very little for what you 
are so anxious to maintain, the sexual purity of the child, 
even when you can convince me that the activities of the 
suckling had better not be called sexual. For from the 
third year on, there is no longer any doubt concerning the 
presence of a sexual life in the child. At this time the 
genitals already begin to become active; there is perhaps 
regularly a period of infantile masturbation, in other words, 
a gratification by means of the genitals. The psychic and 
social expressions of the sexual life are no longer absent; 
choice of an object, affectionate preference for certain 
persons, indeed, a leaning toward one of the two sexes, 
jealousy — all these have been established independently 
by unprejudiced observation, prior to the advent of psy- 
choanalysis, and confirmed by every careful observer. 
You will say that you had no doubt as to the early awaken- 
ing of affection, you will take issue only with its sexual 
nature. Children between the ages of three and eight 
have already learned to hide these things, but if you look 
sharply you can always gather sufficient evidence of the 
"sexual " purpose of this affection. What escapes you will 
be amply supplied by investigation. ^ . . 



SEX DEVELOPMENT 121 

From about the sixth or the eighth year on a pause in, 
and reversion of, sexual development is noticeable, which 
in the cases that reach the highest cultural standard de- 
serves the name of a latent period. The latent period 
may also fail to appear and there need not be an inter- 
ruption of sexual activity and sexual interests at any 
period. Most of the experiences and impulses prior to the 
latent period then fall victim to the infantile amnesia, 
the forgetting we have already discussed, which cloaks our 
earliest childhood and makes us strangers to it. 

It is true, as Freud states, that scientists, 
medical and otherwise, have noted sex mani- 
festations in children long before the onset of 
puberty. During puberty the transfer of erog- 
enous primacy from the mouth zone to the 
genital zone is unmistakable. It is for this 
reason that onanism is so common during the 
adolescent period. 

Thus, as the child develops there is a transfer 
of organic pleasure-sensations from one part of 
the body to another. Later, at puberty, when 
the reproductive organs begin actually to func- 
tion, and the child shows signs of beginning its 
independent life of thought and action, normal 
individuals, if they have fallen into the habit of 
onanism, gradually give it up because the over- 
idealization of the adolescent period leads them 
to centre their interests in the opposite sex and 



122 YOUR INNER SELF 

away from their own gross physical pleasures. 
In other words, the animal, primitive, self- 
centred traits of early childhood disappear. 
They no longer interpret pleasure largely in 
terms of their own bodies. They now take their 
keenest pleasure in psychic (mental) sensations. 

To be sure, the development just outlined 
comes on gradually and, one might add, subtly. 
All persons do not progress just alike. 

As sex development is a gradual progression 
from one stage to another it is easy to understand 
that some persons might be halted in this pro- 
gression. Instead of transferring to the oppo- 
site sex in a normal heterosexual way they might 
either continue to enjoy unduly pleasures de- 
rived from their own bodies (as the onanist does) 
or they might develop just a little further and 
find pleasure in a duplication of their own sex, 
namely in the person of another of the same sex. 
Incidentally, this latter is true of many normal 
female adolescents as a transition stage and often 
is a substitute for onanism which is more com- 
mon to boys. The phenomenon is known as a 
"crush." If such a love attachment to the 
same sex continues for years — to the exclusion 
even of interest in the opposite sex — and is never 
broken, such persons become more and more 



SEX DEVELOPMENT 123 

distinctly homosexual^ their attachment being a 
fixation in the course of their sex development. 

All of us are somewhat homosexual, not only 
because of the self-pleasure fixations already 
mentioned but also because one's love and 
fixation for the parent of the same sex prepares 
the way for the possibilities of affection for other 
individuals (strangers) of the same sex. Thus 
the affection of friendship between men, as well 
as between women, may be very strong and 
idealistic. Although such attachments illustrate 
homosexuality, they usually have nothing what- 
ever to do with abnormal sexuality. They are 
simply highly valuable, symbolized substitute 
outlets for very natural fixations in childhood. 

Persons who have fixations in that they show 
marked self-gratification like a child are also 
spoken of as being auto-erotic. Another term 
that has been coined for this type is N arc ism. 
According to mythology, it was Narcissus who 
fell in love with his own image as reflected in a 
pool of water. Individuals who receive pleasur- 
able gratification in admiring themselves, as 
young children do, are said to be, in psycho- 
analytic parlance, Narcistic. 

Women — and men, too — who spend hours in 
dressing themselves and in mirror-gazing are 



i2 4 YOUR INNER SELF 

manifesting narcistic tendencies. Many hours 
are wasted by such persons in the procedure of 
self-adornment. 

What might be interpreted as fundamentally 
sex fixations are often symbolized in non-sexual 
habits. Excessive smoking and gum chewing 
are fixations from nursery days. Likewise, 
over-indulgence in eating is a regression to stimu- 
lation of the primary erogenous mouth zone. 
Drunkenness may be interpreted in this way. 

Besides, since the entire gastro-intestinal tract 
is nothing more than a hollow tube suspended 
inside the body and is directly connected with 
the mouth, its functioning may be held in 
bondage by the same laws that govern disturb- 
ances referable to the mouth (or anus) and may 
be traceable back to erogenous sensations first 
brought into play years ago. Many persons 
who suffer with "nerves' also complain of 
" indigestion. " Treating such "functional' 
stomach and intestinal disorders directly with 
drugs, as though they were of pure organic 
origin, may alleviate distressing symptoms for a 
time, but only a complete psychoanalysis, a 
thorough probing of the inner self, will reveal the 
unconscious complexes which are responsible. 

Erogenous zone fixations and regressions ex- 



I SEX DEVELOPMENT 125 

plain many of the most puzzling cases that come 
before the neurologist. The explanations are 
not always of sex origin although frequently such 
is the case. When they are, an honest recog- 
nition of the sex basis underlying the disease 
picture, such as a searching analysis reveals, 
effects a cure. Certainly such procedure justi- 
fies itself even if it prove shocking at first. 
Curiously enough, patients whose obsessions, 
or whatever their disease may be, undergo a sex 
interpretation are not commonly shocked. Their 
diseases are tortures and the analysis brings 
them no distress of mind comparable to their 
physical sufferings. Furthermore, patients 
whose sex life is at fault learn during a psycho- 
analysis to think of and to discuss sex matters 
in an impartial and impersonal fashion. The 
light of science illumines the dark corners, and a 
direct and candid handling of matters which 
might ordinarily excite prurience of thought now 
stimulates only a wholesome and helpful interest. 

Since neuroses are often caused by sex re- 
pressions the clear need arises for as much 
knowledge as possible on sex development — 
especially enlightenment on sex matters during 
childhood. 

The ideal source of information on sex matters 



126 YOUR INNER SELF 

for the child is the mother. From her lips will 
come most naturally the story of its prenatal 
life within her own body. This revelation will 
carry no slightest shock, if the truth be told 
simply and directly. The child is sure to re- 
spond with a fresh access of love and devotion. 

A child begins to ask questions on these sub- 
jects while it is still very young, usually at any 
time after five years — that is, during the period 
of over-idealization when the love of the child 
for its parents is strongly instinctive and is only 
beginning to be a matter of reasoning. Any new 
knowledge which tends to strengthen this re- 
lation, by giving the child fresh grounds for 
its love, will be absorbed by the child's mind 
eagerly, as the earth soaks up the rain. The 
beautiful story of human reproduction may be 
unfolded gradually, as the mother deems it wise 
to add new details from time to time, illustrating 
by parallels taken from plants and animals. 

If, however, the mother or father reproves its 
first questionings, the child is sure to turn inward 
to morbid speculation, or aside to other sources 
of information, often impure. Facts will be ac- 
quired piecemeal, possibly distorted and vulgar- 
ized. A spring that should bubble up pure and 
sparkling, a well of inspiration and ideality for 



SEX DEVELOPMENT 127 

the whole after life, has been choked with dirt 
and rubbish. 

But parents are apt to be remiss in this 
matter. Mothers are often timid, inclined to 
shirk their responsibilities, to put them on the 
shoulders of the teacher. No school courses in 
physiology or sex hygiene, however admirably 
conducted and useful for the child as it grows 
older, can take the place of the close and intimate 
talks between mother and child in those early 
years when the child's whole heart lies open to 
the mother's loving eyes. Together with the 
sex knowledge she is imparting she has the oppor- 
tunity to establish in her child's mind a sense of 
the sacredness of the body, of the value of personal 
dignity, of the meaning of self-respect. She can 
do this, if she is the right kind of mother, without 
in the least brushing off the bloom of child- 
ish innocence. The sympathetic understanding 
thus established will be of untold value as a help 
and protection to the child, especially during the 
troubled years of adolescence. 



Chapter XI 

NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 

Definitions — Ordinary Nervousness — 
Sex Factor in Neuroses — Phobias — 
Anxiety Neuroses — Compulsion Neuroses 
— Hysteria — Neurasthenia — Psychas- 
thenic 

There can be little doubt that a majority of 
the population suffer from "nerves" or are 
"nervous" at some period of their lives. 

The term "nervousness" is an exceedingly 
loose one and covers a multitude of complaints 
directly or indirectly traceable to the nervous 
system. From such symptoms as headaches, 
vertigo, palpitation, pains in the heart region, 
laboured breathing or shortness of breath, di- 
gestive disturbances, and all sorts of aches in 
various parts of the body, to insomnia, "sleep 
starts," excessive dreaming, fears and obsessions 
of all kinds, anxiety, sense of impending danger, 
inability to concentrate, loss of ambition, cloudy 

128 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 129 

memory, feelings of unreality and inferiority, 
general unhappiness — these and a host of others, 
singly or in combination as the case may be, 
harass thousands of people. 

Nervousness should not be confounded with 
diseases of the brain or spinal cord, which bear 
special diagnostic names, and in which organic 
changes have occurred in the tissues themselves. 
Again, nervousness should not be confused with 
insanity — a discussion of which has been re- 
served for the next chapter. 1 

Nervousness implies a functional disturbance. 
It signifies an inability of coordination, a dis- 
harmony of working. It is an abnormal action 
of the nervous system and not abnormality of the 
nerves themselves. 

If a city's telephone system were to get out of 
order the cause might be worn-out equipment 
(dynamos, receivers, wires) or it might be lack 
of cooperation between the different switch- 
boards. The former would be an organic defect; 
the latter, a functional. 

If you take up the receiver, asking for a certain 
number, and you find yourself connected with a 
different one, there is nothing wrong with the 
electrical equipment of the system but there is 
something decidedly at fault in the transmission 



i 3 o YOUR INNER SELF 

of the message* Right wires go to wrong places, 
as it were. The defect is functional. 

General ignorance of the distinction between 
the functional and organic has been largely 
responsible, I believe, for the lack of sympathy 
often accorded nervous people. 

"It's only your imagination/' says one friend. 
"Just forget it — exercise your will power/' says 
another. The sufferer receives an abundance 
of gratuitous advice — sometimes even advice for 
which he pays, and from physicians — but con- 
tinues without improvement until, weary and 
burdened with increasing feelings of self-accu- 
sation, of being responsible and personally to 
blame for his condition, he loses all hope and 
slumps into despair. 

If we gave up that vague term " nervousness'* 
altogether we would be making a start in the 
right direction. To classify a person under an 
ambiguity leads to indefiniteness, obscurity and, 
worst of all, lack of understanding. Nervous- 
ness is a waste-basket term that holds all sorts of 
diagnostic trash. The substitute word which 
has received scientific acceptance is Neurosis. 
A neurosis is a functional nervous disease. A 
person who suffers from a neurosis is a Neurotic. 

Having studied the hypotheses underlying the 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 131 

science of psychoanalysis — having acquired an 
insight into the workings of the inner self — we 
are now in a position to orient ourselves. We 
shall now be able to gain a fair conception of the 
myriad results of disharmony within the uncon- 
scious or of maladjustments between the con- 
scious and the unconscious. We shall also 
appreciate why neurotics are so misunderstood 
and why they receive so little consideration at 
the hands of their fellows, even their fellow 
sufferers. 

A neurosis is primarily a problem of indi- 
vidualistic psychology. No two neuroses are 
alike. Unless a normal individual has an in- 
sight into the principles of unconscious oper- 
ations he may be pardoned for impatience with 
his sick friend. Unless a neurotic has grasped 
the concept of the unconscious with its protean 
strivings and thwartings he, too, must be ex- 
cused for accusing himself of being a weakling 
and a humbug. 

We have learned that the demands of libidi- 
nous desires are different in different indi- 
viduals. The chances of their satisfactory ex- 
pression in the world of reality are also different 
in each case. Thinking of the entire group of 
libidinous urges as a single unit, persons with 



i 3 2 YOUR INNER SELF 

weak desires are less likely to be thwarted than 
those with strong ones. Again, those with 
strong libidinous tendencies are likely to escape 
disappointment, if the circumstances of their 
station in life and financial status are such as to 
make their wants readily gratifiable. 

This does not mean that the rich are able to 
find satisfaction and conquer their world more 
easily than the poor, nor does it mean that the 
educated and cultured have an appreciable ad- 
vantage over those less fortunate. In fact, 
worldly goods and college opportunities often 
crystallize refinements of unconscious desires 
that cannot be fulfilled, thus creating new and 
additional demands which make adjustment 
still more complicated. To be sure, numerical 
increase of demands also means in a way in- 
creased possibilities for enjoyment, hence satis- 
faction; yet, fundamentally, repressed, uncon- 
scious desires (complexes) are not conditioned by 
poverty or riches, material or intellectual. 

Thwarted emotions of a distinctly primitive 
sort are at the root of neurotic difficulties. 
Repressed desires, having to do with the libidi- 
nous strivings of nutrition, sex, self-preservation, 
and ego, are, in last analysis, the weak links in 
the chain of development of the average neu- 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 133 

rotic. The struggle waged between various 
libidinous tendencies is often responsible for a 
conflict that results in repressions, and these 
repressions cause a neurosis. One of the 
commonest of these struggles is between the sex 
libido and the ego libido. 

Here, again, Freud's own words will serve best 
to make the matter clear. The passages that 
follow are taken from his "Introduction:' 3 



To show you the influence of ego development in the 
formation of a conflict, and so to give an illustration of the 
causation of neuroses, I should like to cite an example 
which, although it is entirely imaginary, is not far removed 
from probability in any respect. Drawing upon the title 
of a farce by Nestroy, I shall label this example "On the 
ground floor and in the first story." The janitor lives on 
the ground floor, while the owner of the house, a rich, 
distinguished man, occupies the first story. Both have 
children, and we shall assume that the owner permits his 
little daughter to play unwatched with the child of the 
people. Then it may easily happen that the games of 
the children become "naughty," that is, they assume a 
sexual character; they play "father and mother," watch 
each other in the performance of intimate performances, 
and mutually stimulate their genitals. The janitor's 
daughter, who, in spite of her five or six years of age, has 
had occasion to make observations on the sexuality of 
adults, probably played the part of the seducer. These 
experiences, even though they be of short duration, are 
sufficient to set in motion certain sexual impulses in both 



134 YOUR INNER SELF 

children, which continue in the form of onanism for several 
years after the common games have ceased. So far the 
consequences are similar; the final result will be very dif- 
ferent. The janitor's daughter will continue onanism 
possibly to the commencement of her periods, abandon it 
then without difficulty, not many years later find a lover, 
perhaps bear a child, choose this or that path of life, which 
may likely enough make of her a popular artist who ends 
as an aristocrat. Perhaps the outcome will be less 
brilliant, but at any rate she will work out her life, free 
from neurosis, unharmed by her premature sexual activity. 
Very different is the effect on the other child. Even while 
she is very young she will realize vaguely that she has 
done wrong. In a short while, perhaps only after a vio- 
lent struggle, she will renounce the gratification of 
onanism, yet still retain an undercurrent of depression in 
her attitude. If, during her early childhood, she chances 
to learn something about sexual intercourse, she will turn 
away in explicable disgust and seek to remain innocent. 
Probably she is at the time subjected anew to an irresist- 
ible impulse to onanism, of which she does not dare com- 
plain. When the time arrives for her to find favour in the 
eyes of a man, a neurosis will suddenly develop and cheat 
her out of marriage and the joy of life. When analysis 
succeeds in gaining insight into this neurosis, it will reveal 
that this well-bred, intelligent girl of high ideals, has 
completely suppressed her sexual desires but that un- 
consciously they cling to the meagre experience she had 
with the friend of her childhood. 

The difference of these two destinies, arising from the 
same experience, is due to the fact that one ego has 
experienced development while the other has not. The 
janitor's daughter in later years looks upon sexual inter- 
course as the same natural and harmless thing it had 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 135 

seemed in her childhood. The owner's daughter had 
experienced the influence of education and had recognized 
its claims. Thus stimulated, her ego had forged its ideals 
of womanly purity and lack of desire which, however, 
could not agree with any sexual activity; her intellectual 
development had made unworthy her interest in the 
woman's part she was to play. This higher moral and 
intellectual evolution of her ego was in conflict with the 
claims of her sexuality. 

As the illustration quoted brings out, the 
neurosis in the case of the owner's daughter is 
not a question of kind or amount of sexuality 
displayed but a question of the conflict waged 
between the sex libido and the ego libido. 

As a result of premature sexual experience the 
owner's child senses having done wrong, realizing 
that her acts are at variance with her own 
knowledge of what is right. She condemns her- 
self and feels that she has done something she 
would be ashamed to have her mother know. 
The child tries to overcome the habit of onanism. 
Each relapse causes a renewal of remorse and 
results in a growing conviction of unworthiness. 
Later there develops a feeling of disgust for all 
sexual manifestations. 

During adolescence this painful emotion of re- 
morse causes the growing girl to repress her ear- 
lier sexual experiences, thus producing a complex. 



136 YOUR INNER SELF 

This complex seeping into consciousness produces 
a reluctant over-interest in sexual things wher- 
ever they crop up — in the talk of playmates, in 
books, moving pictures, etc. Such thoughts 
intrigue and obsess her mind, despite an exhaust- 
ing struggle which keeps up unremittingly, mov- 
ed by the feeling that all such things are evil and 
disgusting. The same feeling makes it im- 
possible for the young girl to consult her mother, 
who, we will suppose, is not wise enough to take 
the first step toward a helpful understanding 
with her child. 

Education and refinements of conduct in- 
culcated through her social status develop the 
ego libido of the owner's daughter. This ego 
(her personality) suffers a revulsion of feeling 
against any outgoing emotion toward the oppo- 
site sex, such as would be natural to her age — 
innocent flirtation, coquetry, and so on. 

Nevertheless, her sex libido, now repressed, 
still tries to reassert itself. This is attempted 
through the complex (conflict between childish 
sensuality and feeling of remorse) which storms 
consciousness for recognition. 

The ego and sex libidoes are therefore in seri- 
ous antagonism, one trying to conquer the 
other. Neither succeeds. The final result of 



I NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 137 

this struggle is a neurosis which attacks the girl 
at the time when normally she would be ready 
for marriage. 
To quote Freud from the same book: 

Psychoanalysis never forgot that non-sexual impulses 
exist. It insisted on the decided distinction between 
sexual and ego-impulses and maintained in the face of 
every objection not that neuroses arise from the sexuality, 
but that they owe their origin to the conflict between 
sexuality and the ego. Psychoanalysis can have no 
reasonable motive for denying the existence or significance 
of ego-impulses, even though it investigates the influence 
sexual impulses play in illness and in life. 

From what I have written thus far the reader 
may be led to believe that, first, all neuroses 
have in some way a sex basis, whether other 
libidinous urges are brought into conflict or not, 
and secondly, that such symptoms as headache, 
etc., enumerated previously, being neurotic in 
character, must needs also have a sex expla- 
nation. 

As to the former, Freud would certainly 
maintain this to be true, although we must bear 
in mind his phrase, "not that neuroses arise 
from sexuality, but that they owe their origin to 
the conflict between sexuality and the ego. ,J 
Is this merely a distinction without a difference? 



138 YOUR INNER SELF 

Perhaps it would appear so on the surface. 
However, this distinction makes all the difference 
in the world. It lifts the neuroses out of 
sensuality, and raises them up. It proves that 
neurotics are not only not over-sexed or steeped 
in sex but that, in truth, their very disease proves 
that they have fought a long-drawn battle 
against sex, against animal cravings. In short, 
the neurosis is a compliment to the intellectual, 
refined, conscious non-sexuality of the patient. 

Certainly one need not blush to recognize in 
oneself sex impulses, for they are common to us 
all and we must accept them as part of our racial 
inheritance. But, because we have moral stand- 
ards which have been found after long experience 
to be the best laws, after all, under which 
people can live together, we can and should 
censure sex license and sex depravity. These 
latter, though, are foreign to neurotics. Their 
sex impulses have been restrained, denied their 
natural and healthy outlet, repressed. There 
has been a conflict* The neurosis is the result 
of that conflict. 

Furthermore, we must recall what has been 
touched upon in previous pages. Not all psycho- 
analysts place the emphasis upon sex libido — 
even as just outlined — that Freud does. Adler's 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 139 

theories of organ inferiority have been men- 
tioned. There are others. 

Regarding single symptoms such as headache, 
or palpitation, or loss of ambition, it is necessary 
to add that one or two symptoms do not consti- 
tute a neurosis any more than one swallow makes 
a summer. Well-defined neuroses often do ex- 
hibit such symptoms, but such symptoms do not 
necessarily signify the existence of a neurosis. 

Manifestations like these are best termed 
neurotic, meaning like a neurosis. Sometimes 
they are the forerunners of an ultimate neurosis. 
Often they progress no further. 

Even if we are willing to agree with Freud 
that a sex conflict exists somehow in all well- 
defined neuroses, we need not assume that all 
symptoms that suggest actual neuroses have a 
sex significance. In my own experience as an 
analyst I have treated many cases of that 
nature. They often disappeared after little 
more than a superficial analysis had been made, 
no reference whatever to the sex life of the 
subject having been necessary. 

A woman of fifty had a haunting fear of revol- 
vers. She would avoid shops that might dis- 
play firearms in the windows. Analysis un- 
covered an emotional shock during girlhood 



i 4 o YOUR INNER SELF 

when a neighbour went into the woods and shot 
himself. The patient had repressed and for- 
gotten the incident and the remembrance of 
seeing the revolver that the suicide had used. 
Its reappearance in consciousness removed the 
fear symptom. There was no mention of the 
patient's sex life, although dread of firearms of 
all kinds is supposed to have some sex signifi- 
cance. 

Another case was that of a man of middle age 
who complained of a sense of dizziness and 
confusion, sometimes described as a feeling of 
being lifted up in the air. Sensations of being 
carried through the air are supposed to be rather 
characteristically sex symbols. In this case the 
analysis brought to light that the patient and his 
father were at odds over the management of a 
wholesale business. Being lifted up meant his 
own removal from the business. His uncon- 
scious wish was to quit, while his conscious self 
was preaching the duty of sticking to a business 
that had been in the family for years. Here, 
again, the symptoms were removed without sex 
being brought into question. 

Out of justice to Freud it must be added that 
in the last case one might presuppose an GEdipus 
complex as the root cause of the patient's busi- 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 141 

ness conflict, perhaps dating back to a natural 
rivalry between son and father for the mother's 
affection. However, the point is that it proved 
unnecessary to go as deeply as that. The patient 
was cured without reference to sex. 

The various abnormal fears or Phobias which 
appear in certain neuroses are a source of the 
greatest annoyance, if not torment, to the 
patient. Claustrophobia (fear of closed places) 
has already been mentioned. Others are Agora- 
phobia (fear of open places), Misophobia (fear 
of dirt, uncleanliness, or of germs), Aerophobia 
(fear of high places), and so on. Phobias and 
all kinds of anxiety states (including the phobia 
of stammering) are often grouped under the name 
of Anxiety Neurosis or Anxiety Hysteria. 

Abnormal fears such as these fill every hour 
of the patient's life with acute suffering. After 
a time there is no escape from them. A case in 
point is the following, taken from Pfister, and 
quoted by Wilfred Lay in his "Man's Uncon- 
scious Conflict." 

A bachelor forty-seven years old carried on a war from 
his twelfth year with the number 13. His sufferings 
forced him to leave school and spoiled his whole life for 
him. He was constrained to pay attention to the number 
constantly. Thirteen minutes before and after each hour 



142 YOUR INNER SELF 

was a moment of anxiety for him, as well as every position 
of the hands of the clock which added up to 13, e.g. 8:23. 
Other situations which produced the anxiety were, to 
mention only a few out of hundreds: if it struck eleven 
when two persons were in the room, or if five persons were 
at table at eight o'clock. He could not stay away from 
home thirteen hours. The whole of March (3rd month), 
1910, was an unlucky month, in which he did not dare to 
undertake anything important, as well as February, 191 1, 
etc. The hours from five to eight were sinister because 
five, six, seven, and eight add up to 26, which is twice 13. 
Every thirteenth line of a letter, every set of numbers 
which summed up 13 brought misery. He had to shun 
not only every house numbered 13, but all the residents of 
such a house. . . . The most remarkable was the 
inability to go to bed at ten o'clock because he always 
said three prayers. 

The so-called Compulsion Neuroses are an 
interesting group from a scientific viewpoint, but 
the patients themselves suffer tortures. 

Such unfortunates are harassed with all sorts 
of doubts, uncertainties, and often obsessions 
(acts that they must give way to and perform 
again and again although they realize their 
uselessness and absurdity) that render their lives 
a misery. One patient has to dress and undress 
three times before she feels satisfied to leave her 
clothes on; another must give way to the irre- 
sistible compulsion to add together the numbers 
on all the automobile licenses that pass him in 



NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS 143 

the street; a third is obsessed with the idea that 
some indefinite fatality will befall him should he 
step on a crack in a street pavement. Klep- 
tomania may be caused by a compulsion neuro- 
sis. Continual doubting (folie de doute) and 
all kinds of purposeless muscle spasms ("tics") 
belong to this category. 

All phobias, anxiety states, obsessions, morbid 
impulses, and compulsions are the result of 
deep-seated complex disturbances in the un- 
conscious. They have originally been caused 
by repression. Fixations, regressions, and other 
mental mechanisms may be the causative fac- 
tors. 

In Hysteria similar causes are demonstrable. 
Repression in these cases is very strong, so strong 
that the only safety valve is a conversion of the 
repressed material into such dramatic physical 
symptoms as blindness, paralyses, immobility 
of joints, convulsions, persistent tremor of limbs 
or body, complete loss of powers of sensation or 
speech, complete loss of memory for certain 
events, etc. 

The familiar "shell shock' cases resulting 
from the war are neuroses ("concussion neu- 
roses"). Some of these men never were at the 
battle front. The war simply acted as a pre- 



i 4 4 YOUR INNER SELF 

cipitating cause to an underlying, potentially 
developing neurosis. 

Neurasthenia and Psychasthenia are terms 
commonly but incorrectly applied to a so-called 
nervous breakdown. Neurasthenia means an 
asthenia or exhaustion of nerves (neurones), and 
psychasthenia an exhaustion of the mind 
(psyche). For general use these terms are 
preferable to nervousness. However, they have 
special meanings to neurologists, depending 
largely upon the classification of neuroses that 
is adopted as a working basis. It really matters 
little which of the many classifications is used. 
The diagnostic name is not so important if the 
symptoms and their causes are recognized. In 
the end it is the individualistic psychology, the 
analysis of the patient himself, that counts. 

If one is to avoid a complete breakdown- — 
avoid a neurosis — one must needs explore the 
inner self at the very first suggestions of collapse. 
Cessation from work, a rest or change of scene, 
help to a degree. But the essential thing is 
complete and fearless exploration of the un- 
conscious — a thorough and competent psycho- 
analysis. 



Chapter XII 

WHAT IS INSANITY? 

Definitions — Differentials Between 
Neuroses and Psychoses — Dementia Prae- 
cox — Mental Hygiene 

With but few exceptions, persons who are 
neurotic or who suffer actual neuroses harbour a 
haunting dread that they are going insane. If 
they do not attempt to satisfy their own minds 
by asking the question themselves, in all likeli- 
hood they will respond in the affirmative if the 
question is put to them. 

To the layman insanity appears a mysterious 
disease that may pounce upon one unawares 
before one has had a chance to combat it. To 
the majority insanity connotes the idea of life 
incarceration in an asylum. 

It is not my intention to brush such fears 
aside as being nonsensical. But earnestly do 
I wish to be reassuring. First, insanity is not a 
baffling condition which creeps on insidiously 

145 



146 YOUR INNER SELF 

without cause or warning; secondly, most cases 
are either curable or improvable; lastly, insanity 
is largely preventable, 

Here certain statistics furnished by the 
National Committee for Mental Hygiene are 
interesting. With a population of a hundred 
millions, the United States has a total estimated 
insane population of only about three hundred 
thousand. To be sure this means an enormous 
economic loss to the country, estimated at two 
hundred million dollars a year, yet the prob- 
ability of any one going insane is small. Besides, 
of the patients discharged from sixty-nine state 
hospitals during 1920, a third left the asylums 
recovered, about one half were sent home as 
improved, 15 per cent, remained unimproved, 
and about 5 per cent, were diagnosed as not 
insane. 

Psychosis and its plural Psychoses are terms 
that should be used instead of insanity. "In- 
sanity" is not a medical classification but a legal 
one, and it is about as inaccurate to use it for 
"psychosis' as it is to employ "nervousness' 
to mean " neurosis.' 3 To be insane means simply 
to be suffering from some form of mental dis- 
turbance that renders one committable to an 
asylum — and nothing worse- The word is purely 



WHAT IS INSANITY? 147 

sociological and gives no clue whatever to the 
nature of the mental disorder. 

We speak of various psychoses as we do of 
different kinds of neuroses. 

The question whether a neurosis is a mild form 
of psychosis or eventually leads to it is best 
answered by comparing the two conditions. 
Neuroses and psychoses have characteristics in 
common; they also have decidedly dissimilar 
attributes. 

In discussing the neuroses the individual's 
powers of adaptability to the world about him 
was stressed. If he was able to harmonize with 
the world of reality, no matter what the kind or 
force of his inner libidinous strivings might be, 
no neurosis could develop. If he remained out 
of harmony with his surroundings, a neurosis 
might result. The crux of the whole problem of 
both neuroses and psychoses is the individual's 
behaviour in the community in which he lives. 

It doesn't make a particle of difference what an 
individual thinks, experiences, or feels provided 
he keeps his sensations to himself or does not 
annoy others with them. He may have head- 
aches and dizziness; his eyes may behold wonder- 
ful and strange sights, and his ears be regaled by 
the most exquisite melodies; he may feel strange, 



148 YOUR INNER SELF 

queer sensations within his own body and be 
obsessed with all sorts of fads and fancies. So 
long, I repeat, as he keeps these things to him- 
self all goes well so far as the community is con- 
cerned. 

Both the neurotic and the psychotic may 
experience such sensations as these, and the 
causes in both cases take their rise in conflicts 
and repressions. But here the similarity be- 
tween them ceases. While the neurotic realizes 
his peculiarities and tries to harmonize them at 
any cost with his environment, the psychotic, 
on the other hand, does not realize his differences 
from the average member of society. The 
psychotic has no "insight.' 3 Furthermore, he 
not only does not try to harmonize his peculiari- 
ties with the world but he sets out on a course 
that, figuratively, is one of running away from 
reality. 

A neurosis and a psychosis are both com- 
promises between the strivings of the inner self 
and the world outside. . 

The neurotic has made a compromise (an 
adjustment) and found shelter in the resultant 
symptoms. These symptoms he tries to live 
with and make consonant with the standards of 
society. Thus he never becomes anti-social in 



WHAT IS INSANITY? 149 

the sense of " taking the law into his own hands" 
and injuring anybody or anything. 

The psychotic, too, has made a compromise 
(an adjustment) and found shelter in his symp- 
toms. But his adjustment develops to such 
success and completeness that he runs away from 
the world of reality and in its stead builds up a 
world of imagination all his own and suited to 
his make-up. Thus the natural tendency of a 
psychotic is to become anti-social, to rebel 
against existing laws, customs, and the people 
with whom he is surrounded. Thus, also, he 
ends as a sociological problem. He becomes a 
person against whom society, for its own self- 
preservation, must protect itself. Sooner or 
later, therefore, he drifts into the hands of the 
law. Hence the legal term "insanity," hence 
the patient's commitment to an asylum for the 
mentally deranged. 

A man suffers from numbness in his limbs and 
occasional sensations like 'pins and needles." 
He consults a physician. He tells him that he 
cannot understand these strange feelings, that 
they came on without apparent cause. 

The physician makes a thorough physical 
examination and tells the patient that, being 
unable to discover anything wrong with his 



ISO YOUR INNER SELF 

organic nervous system or with any other organ 
of his body, he regards him as suffering from a 
functional trouble, a neurosis. The patient 
accepts this explanation and probably decides to 
follow the advice given by his doctor. 

Another man with the same complaint, the 
same physician, and the identical advice, leaves 
the doctor's office in an entirely different state 
of mind. He may believe that the diagnosis of 
his symptoms as functional in character is cor- 
rect. But why? he still asks. Why should I 
have such sensations? 

"I know hundreds of people who are nervous 
who don't feel the way I do," he muses. "The 
doctor is right about my being nervous but he 
doesn't know it all. He doesn't know that 
somebody is working on my nerves to put them 
in such a fix. He doesn't know that I've lost my 
job because the foreman is jealous of me; he 
doesn't know about the queer way people look 
at me in the street. That doctor doesn't realize 
how really different I am. It's the trades union 
that's at the bottom of the whole thing. I'm 
too expert in my line, that's what's the matter. 
They're jealous. They got me fired. They've 
tipped other people off — that's why they look 
at me so funny! They're afraid to face me and 



WHAT IS INSANITY? 151 

they use underhand methods to get even. I 
haven't got these queer feelings for nothing. 
They're working wireless on me — that's what 
they're doing! No use telling that M.D. — he 
wouldn't understand. Probably say I was 
crazy. But I know — I know the whole thing 
from A to Z. It's wireless — that's what it is. 
The unions are working wireless on me!' 

Here we have a sick brain reasoning from one 
thing to another by fairly plausible steps — 
logical enough if the premises are accepted — and 
leading inevitably to ideas of grandeur and 
persecution. The patient's premises are faulty; 
appeal to his reason and positive proof of his 
suspicions being wrong would not shake his 
convictions one jot. He is absolutely convinced; 
his compromise (explanation) with the world of 
reality (fellow workers and trades union) is 
perfect for he has given it substance in a world of 
fancy of his own making, a psychic world that 
offers a ready explanation for every difficulty. 
His ego libido has triumphed. He has run away 
from reality. He has substituted imagination 
for fact. He has developed a psychosis. He 
has become a confirmed Paranoiac. 

To be sure this is a hypothetical case and the 
patient's reasoning is hypothetical also. Yet it 



152 YOUR INNER SELF 

illustrates the inevitable end-result of psychotic 
reasoning, faulty insight, and an asocial or anti- 
social attitude toward the world outside. 

The patient's original symptoms were ex- 
plained by conflicts in the inner self. In the 
case of the neurotic the adjustment or compro- 
mise stopped with the symptoms. In the case 
of the psychotic the adjustment did not stop 
with the symptoms. It would be misleading to 
say that he developed like a neurotic but went 
further, for this would imply that all neurotics 
may eventually become psychotics. In the last 
case the inherent adjustment itself was different. 
It embraced his discharge from the factory and 
the supposed attitude of the people on the street. 
He has been heading for a different direction 
long since. His adjustment was psychotic in 
character from the very beginning — probably 
from childhood. 

Along the road of repression both the embryo 
neurotic and the potential psychotic travel. 
Then there comes a fork, one road leading to 
the left and another to the right. The neurotic 
turns one way and the psychotic the other. The 
neurotic does not retrace his steps and follow the 
other road. So also does the psychotic travel 
his own course. That is why a neurotic need 



WHAT IS INSANITY? 153 

not fear a psychosis. His road, his adjustment, 
during the slow evolution of years has been 
definitely charted and fixed. 

About a quarter of all the patients admitted to 
hospitals for the insane are diagnosed Dementia 
Precox. It is a malady that has no rival in the 
destructive progressiveness and sureness with 
which it takes hold of the adolescent mind, 
finally rendering its victim hopeless, helpless, 
and deteriorated to a purely animal existence. 
Its first signs are revealed early in life — about the 
time of puberty — and it is doubtful whether it 
ever develops after thirty or thirty-five. 

Dementia Praecox is the quintessence of intro- 
version. The patients have completely severed 
normal relationship with the world about them. 
An impassable gulf separates them from every- 
body and everything. All libidinous urges are 
turned inwards: fixations, repressions, and re- 
gressions can be analyzed, although this may 
require unusual expertness on the part of an 
examiner. The patients live within themselves 
and their interest in outside affairs cannot be 
aroused. We say they have an "inadequate 
personality" for the ways of life. Their adjust- 
ment within themselves is so perfect that, once 
established, it cannot be broken up. 



154 YOUR INNER SELF 

Despite the frequency of this dread psychosis 
one must admit that comparatively little is 
known about its causation. Some believe that 
the psychic manifestations are only secondary to, 
and follow, organic changes of a chemical nature 
in the bodily organs. Yet we do know that a 
mental side exists and that in the majority of 
cases seclusiveness, moodiness, a "shut-in type' 
of personality, and a general faulty emotional 
make-up in meeting the realities of life were al- 
ready noted in childhood. 

Psychoanalysis has thrown new light on these 
early maladjustments just as it has on the 
interpretation of all psychoses. A healthy, 
normal, robust attitude toward life should be 
the goal sought by every parent and teacher who 
is responsible for childhood training. A pleasur- 
able zest and will to overcome the conflicts of 
life should be the keynote of all education. 
Abstract, speculative thinking has its place, and 
a very valuable one at that, yet we must see 
to it that if our children are to raise their heads 
above the clouds to view the splendours of 
Olympus their feet must first be planted solidly 
upon the realities of mother earth. 

Mental Hygiene is a phrase we often hear 
nowadays. It signifies the prevention of mental 



WHAT IS INSANITY? 155 

disease through knowledge of the ways it may be 
produced, hence overcome. It is a broadened 
application of the old adage, "A stitch in time 
saves nine/' 

Although not every case of Dementia Praecox 
is preventable, certainly a considerable number 
are. This is true also of every other psychosis, 
and particularly is it true of the neuroses. 

Socrates said, "Know Thyself.' 3 Study the 
inner self, become acquainted with it. There 
is no better mental hygiene recipe. 



Chapter XIII 

CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 

Losing Things — Forgetting of Names 
and Duties — Slips of the Tongue — Mis- 
takes in Reading and Writing — Uninten- 
tional Actions — Mental Telepathy — Super- 
stitions — Wit and Humour—Method of 
Investigation 

No doubt every one of us, at some time or 
other, has lost a treasured object, forgotten the 
name of a friend, spoken words that were not 
intended, or perhaps committed a social error 
that was obviously a mistake and caused em- 
barrassment. 

One is likely to pass such faux pas by without 
further thought unless one has studied psycho- 
analytic principles and has become convinced that 
every effect must have a cause. One might won- 
der, though, whether such "slips" indicate mental 
unbalance or, perhaps, premature senility. 

There should be no misgivings on that score 
because the course of everyday life is replete 

156 



CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 157 

with examples which prove that repressions of 
minor significance are common to us all. For- 
gettings and errors of all kinds are perfectly 
average mental curiosities. One might speak 
of them as normal deviations within the normal. 

A very quiet, dignified lady came to my office 
for her regular analytic consultation, visibly 
perturbed. She was reluctant to tell what the 
trouble was. Later she interrupted the treat- 
ment by announcing she could not put her mind 
on the subject under discussion. She said she 
kept thinking of her wedding ring which she 
had missed from her finger. "I have never 
once taken that ring off since the minister put 
it on nineteen years ago/' she explained. "I 
can't imagine how I could have lost it or even 
misplaced it." 

This incident gave the first hint that marital 
difficulties existed, subsequent events substantiat- 
ing the premise. 

Deductions such as these are not wizardry. 
They are not even scientific guesses. With 
practice one can readily interpret unusual be- 
haviour of this kind. 

We must realize that no thoughts, feelings, or 
actions, no matter what their content, are ever 
accidental. Everything has a meaning. Noth- 



1 58 YOUR INNER SELF 

ing is too trivial for consideration. When it 
concerns striking variations in the routine of our 
daily habits, we may be sure that there is an 
unconscious purpose responsible. 

The wedding ring is, of course, the symbol of 
unbroken union between man and wife. The 
patient's boasting that she had never taken the 
ring off her finger suggested that the bonds of 
love had never been strained. But her husband 
had recently acted in a way that justified feelings 
of jealousy. She had no intention of leaving 
him, nor even of announcing her change of heart. 
She tried her best to forget the disagreeable 
incident which aroused her suspicions. Ap- 
parently she succeeded. Consciousness, to all 
intents and purposes, declared that jealousy did 
not exist. On the other hand, the unconscious 
was not to be misled. Libidinous strivings 
would have their way. Automatically the ring 
was left behind on the washstand. The uncon- 
scious thought which this act symbolized meant 
something like this: "I might as well lose the 
ring since it no longer stands for what it was 
intended to stand." 

Forgetting the names of persons whom we 
know well is not unusual. 

A woman who brought one of her children for 



CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 159 

examination, for a moment could not remember 
the little one's name when I asked for it in 
taking the history of the case. The reason was 
obvious when later I learned that the mother 
had already been told by another physician that 
this, her third child, was an imbecile. The 
mother's consciousness had found the thought of 
a feeble-minded son unbearable. The forgetting 
of the name showed the wish not to have such a 
child. 

A physician admitted to me having made it a 
custom to require his secretary to write on a card 
the name of the next patient waiting for him, 
which card would be handed to him before the 
interview. He practised this for two years and 
then gave up medicine to enter the real-estate 
business. The man should never have been a 
doctor. His unconscious mind had been trying 
to tell him so for months. 

I know of a man forgetting even his own name. 
He was sending a check for a long-standing debt. 
When he came to the signature he hesitated so 
long because his surname had escaped him that 
he threw down the pen in disgust. 

Once I received a check from a patient which 
was unsigned. The implication was not at all 
flattering. 



160 YOUR INNER SELF 

Doctor Tridon relates in his book an experi- 
ence of his own while in Mexico City. He had 
become acquainted with a man bearing the same 
family name. He states that he made several 
appointments with the gentleman which he for- 
got to keep and finally mislaid his address. For 
a long time afterward he could not recall the 
man's name even if he tried. He could not 
picture his face and, although he could remember 
his first name, he never got any further than the 
letter T. of the last. As Doctor Tridon ex- 
plains, his own unconscious permitted him to 
enjoy the first name and the letter T because it 
did not interfere with the strivings of his own 
ego. Many people have surnames beginning 
with T, but few are named Tridon. 

The same author mentions Darwin as advising 
"scientific workers to note carefully all the 
facts which contradict their pet theory.' 3 He 
adds: "They can easily remember all the 
positive evidence in favour of it, but will as 
easily forget whatever is opposed to it.' 3 

When we forget a telephone number or the 
house keys or the combination of the safe it 
means that there is an unconscious complex 
responsible. For some reason or other we don't 
want to remember. The same is true if we over- 



CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 161 

look mailing a letter or forget any one of a num- 
ber of tasks which we had assigned ourselves. 

A patient informed me that she could never 
remember the name of the trained nurse who 
attended her brother during an acute illness. 
Also, that it is only with great difficulty that she 
can voluntarily recall the date that he was re- 
moved to the hospital. Both the patient and 
the brother are unmarried and a strong attach- 
ment exists between them. 

Explaining such phenomena as due to absent- 
mindedness or a "trick of the mind" merely begs 
the question and does not bring us one whit 
nearer to an understanding of the problem. The 
real, underneath reason, imbedded in the inner 
self, may itself be trivial, yet it stands for re- 
pression just the same. 

Slips of the tongue {lapsus linguce) also belong 
to this category. 

In his "Psychopathology of Everyday Life" 
Freud cites numerous examples of this and other 
blunders unintentionally made. 

Speaking of Miss Z.,Miss W. depicted her to Miss X. as a 
very "strait-laced" person who was not given to levities, 
etc. Miss X. thereupon remarked "Yes, that is a very char- 
acteristic description, she always appealed to me as very 
straicet-brazed." Here the mistake resolved itself into 



1 62 YOUR INNER SELF 

strait-laced and brazen-faced, which corresponded to Miss 
X.'s opinion of Miss Z. 

Quoting Otto Rank, Freud gives the following 
example : 

A father who was devoid of all patriotic feeling re- 
proached his sons for participating in a patriotic demon- 
stration, and rejected their reference to a similar be- 
haviour of their uncle with these words: "You are not 
obliged to imitate him; why, he is an idiot." The as- 
tonished features of the children at their father's unusual 
tone aroused him to the fact that he had made a mistake, 
and he remarked apologetically, "Of course, I wished to 
say patriot" 

In the chapter on "Mistakes in Reading and 
Writing/' we find: 

Both irritating and laughable is a lapse in reading to 
which I am frequently subject when I walk through the 
streets of a strange city during my vacation. I then read 
antiquities on every shop sign that shows the slightest 
resemblance to the word; this displays the questing spirit 
of the collector. 

I received the proof sheets of my contribution to the 
annual report on neurology and psychiatry, and I was 
naturally obliged to review with special care the names of 
authors, which, because of the many different nationalities 
represented, offer the greatest difficulties to the composi- 
tor. As a matter of fact, I found some strange-sounding 



CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 163 

names still in need of correction; but, oddly enough, the 
compositor had corrected one single name in my manu- 
script, and with a very good reason, I had written 
Buckhard, which the compositor guessed to be Burkhard. 
I had praised the treatise of this obstetrician entitled 
The Influence of Birth on the Origin of Infantile Paralysis, 
and I was not conscious of the least enmity toward him. 
But an author in Vienna, who had angered me by an ad- 
verse criticism of my Traumdeutung y bears the same name. 
It was as if in writing the name Burkhard, meaning the 
obstetrician, a wicked thought concerning the other B. had 
obtruded itself. The twisting of the name, as I have 
already stated in regard to lapses in speech, often signifies a 
depreciation. 

Under "Erroneously Carried-Out Actions," 
Freud cites an illustration given by Dr. Ernest 
Jones and another by Dr. Hans Sachs. They 
follow in order: 

Some years ago I was acting in a subordinate position at 
a certain institution, the front door of which was kept 
locked, so that it was necessary to ring for admission. On 
several occasions I found myself making serious attempts 
to open the door with my house key. Each one of the 
permanent visiting staff, of which I aspired to be a mem- 
ber, was provided with a key to avoid the trouble of having 
to wait at the door. My mistake thus expressed the desire 
to be on a similar footing and to be quite "at home" there. 

At a certain time twice a day for six days I was accus- 
tomed to wait for admission before a door in the second 
story of the same house, and during this long period of 
time it happened twice (within a short interval) that I 



164 YOUR INNER SELF 

climbed a story higher. On the first of these occasions I 
was in an ambitious day-dream, which allowed me to 
"mount always higher and higher/' In fact, at that 
time I heard the door in question open as I put my foot on 
the first step of the third flight. On the other occasion I 
again went too far "engrossed in thought.' ' As soon as I 
became aware of it, I turned back and sought to snatch 
the dominating fantasy. I found that I was irritated over 
a criticism of my works, in which the reproach was that 
I "always went too far," which I replaced by the less 
respectful expression "climbed too high." 

Many other examples of such unintentional 
actions could be given. In dressing for dinner 
a man put on his sack coat instead of his dinner 
coat. His enthusiasm for the occasion was self- 
evident. 

Instead of sending an historical work which 
he had promised to a lady, a gentleman, by 
mistake, sent a very romantic novel. In this 
instance the psychic censor was not as vigilant 
as he should have been. 

Patients sometimes leave articles behind in a 
physician's office such as veils, books, and trifles 
which they are likely to claim by a return visit 
before the next appointment, thus unconsciously 
exhibiting satisfaction with the treatment and a 
wish to repeat the visits. 

An elderly lady has a habit — very annoying 



CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 165 

to her immediate family — of dropping handker- 
chiefs about the house. She admits liking to 
be waited upon but does not realize that her 
unconscious striving to remain young is being 
symbolized by such repeated demands for 
personal attention. 

In the work already mentioned Freud quotes 
Dr. A. A. Brill concerning an experience which 
the latter had and interpreted and which throws 
interesting light on the nature of mental tele- 
pathy: 

While engrossed in conversation during our customary 
Sunday evening dinner at one of the large New York 
restaurants, I suddenly stopped and irrelevantly remarked 
to my wife, "I wonder how Dr. R. is doing in Pittsburgh/' 
She looked at me much astonished and said: "Why, that 
is exactly what I have been thinking for the last few sec- 
onds! Either you have transferred this thought to me or 
I have transferred it to you. How can you otherwise ex- 
plain this strange phenomenon ?" I had to admit that I 
could offer no solution. Our conversation throughout the 
dinner showed not the remotest association to Dr. R., nor, 
so far as our memories went, had we heard or spoken of 
him for some time. Being a sceptic, I refused to admit 
that there was anything mysterious about it, although 
inwardly I felt quite uncertain. To be frank, I was some- 
what mystified. 

But we did not remain very long in this state of mind, 
for on looking toward the cloak-room we were surprised 
to see Dr. R. Though closer inspection showed our mis- 



1 66 YOUR INNER SELF 

take, we were both struck by the remarkable resemblance 
of this stranger to Dr. R. From the position of the cloak- 
room we were forced to conclude that this stranger had 
passed our table. Absorbed in our conversation, we had 
not noticed him consciously, but the visual image had 
stirred up the association of his double, Dr. R. That we 
should both have experienced the same thought is also 
quite natural. The last word from our friend was to the 
effect that he had taken up private practice in Pittsburgh, 
and, being aware of the vicissitudes that beset the beginner, 
it was quite natural to wonder how fortune had smiled 
upon him. 

What promised to be a supernatural manifestation was 
thus easily explained on a normal basis; but had we not 
noticed the stranger before he left the restaurant, it would 
have been impossible to exclude the mysterious. I ven- 
ture to say that such simple mechanisms are at the bottom 
of the most complicated telepathic manifestations; at 
least, such has been my experience in all cases accessible to 
investigation. 

Superstitions also have a psychological struc- 
ture which is capable of analytical interpretation. 
A superstitious belief is really a form of ob- 
session, of compulsive thinking, in which a fear 
element plays the dominant part. This fear is 
of some evil that one must not court. The 
cause behind it is a repressed desire of a primitive 
kind to destroy ruthlessly or do evil to someone 
else. The repression is brought about through 
the refinements of conscious thinking which 



CURIOSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 167 

demand the abolition of such anti-social mo- 
tives. The superstitious fear then becomes a 
compensation which, in a symbolized form, the 
subject himself originally would have liked to 
inflict upon others. By shifting the burden 
of administering punishment to some vague, 
unknown source, he disclaims responsibility for 
whatever may befall if certain prescribed, ritual- 
istic modes of behaviour are not carried out. He 
also includes himself as a possible offender and 
thus squares his conscience. The superstitious 
person really fears the punishment that he should 
expect from the evil desires which he has re- 
pressed. 

"Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious" is 
another book by Sigmund Freud in which he 
demonstrates that the structure of a joke in- 
volves the identical mechanisms to be found in 
dreams and the whole range of neuroses and 
psychoses. Wit is a pleasure-seeking device on 
the part of the unconscious at the expense of 
someone else. 

The methods by which one may investigate the 
causes of the manifold curiosities of everyday 
life — including such phenomena as mental tele- 
pathy, superstitions, and the technique of wit — 
are identical with the psychoanalytic principles 



1 68 YOUR INNER SELF 

set forth in the foregoing pages. In this, the 
method of free word association is important 
(v p. 99). The results of such research, especially 
if conducted upon the curious thoughts and 
actions of oneself, are most gratifying and 
illuminating and amply repay one for -the trouble 
of mastering the technique. 



Chapter XIV 

THE INNER SELF AND THE ARTS 

Ancient Folk-Lore — Primitive Religions 
— Imitative and Creative Art — Art as a 
Normal Compensation — Sublimation — 
Genius 

Throughout this small volume the keynote 
of our discourse has been an exposition of funda- 
mental inner strivings, their repression when 
thwarted, and the compensatory ways into which 
these urges may be transformed. Thus far our 
attention has been centred particularly upon 
the mental mechanisms which harass the person 
and often render him a burden unto himself. We 
have now to learn that the identical factors which 
may cause so much mischief are also responsible 
for all the beauty, comfort, and joy that are to 
be found in religion and the creative arts. 

Away back in antiquity the fairy tales and 
folk-lore of primitive peoples constituted what 
Tridon aptly terms "The Dreams of the Human 
Race." No matter in which country they 

169 



170 YOUR INNER SELF 

originated a striking similarity pervades them 
all. 

As this writer expresses it in his " Psycho- 
analysis" already mentioned: 

The hero of tales and legends has the same origin and 
the same biography the world over. He is invariably the 
child of distinguished parents, preferably of a king or 
a god. . . . His birth is preceded by romantic 
obstacles to his parents' love, continence, barrenness, 
secret intercourse, a great deal of mystery. He is either 
unwelcome or illegitimate or there is a prophecy announc- 
ing how powerful and dangerous he is to become; and his 
father generally wishes to get rid of him. He is generally 
exposed immediately after birth on the water in "a basket 
made of reeds." In inland and mountain regions he is 
exposed on barren cliffs. He is saved either by lowly 
people or helpful animals and suckled either by a humble 
woman or a she-wolf or goat. Afterwards he grows up, 
finds his real parents, often takes revenge on his father and 
not infrequently marries his mother. 

Again quoting Doctor Tridon: 

The oldest of those stories is that of King Sargon of 
Babylon, dating to 2800 B. C. An inscription on Sargon's 
tomb reads: "Sargon, the mighty king of Agade, am I. 
My mother was a vestal; my father I knew not. In a 
hidden place my mother bore me. She laid me in a vessel 
made of reeds, closed the door with pitch and dropped me 
into the river which did not drown me. Akki, the water 
carrier, lifted me up, raised me as his own son and made me 



THE INNER SELF AND THE ARTS 171 

his gardener. In my work I was beloved by Istar, became 
king and for 45 years held kingly sway. . . ." 

We have here the first version on record of the virgin 
birth, which was destined to have a very successful career. 

It is interesting to note in passing that the 
apparently common genesis of the heroic myths 
of all times has been used by the atheist to dis- 
credit the doctrine of the divine conception of 
Christ, likewise by the Christian apologist, as the 
strongest argument for its truth on the ground 
that all myths from the beginning of time have 
been foreshadowing that 

"one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

Had human beings not felt their own limi- 
tations and that the obstacles in the world about 
them were insurmountable, imagination would 
never have been born. Imagining these super- 
human creatures with limitless powers con- 
stituted compensations for their own inferiority. 
It was a projection of the ego libido, often 
coupled with reproductive and other strivings 
as well. What these early peoples wished for 
themselves, what they desired to be able to ac- 
complish themselves, what they dreamed about, 



172 YOUR INNER SELF 

brought into being the gods, the heroes, and the 
fairies. 

What man had learned to worship he next 
tried to perpetuate in some permanent form that 
would outlive himself and his own earthly resi- 
dence. Hence he carved the stone with legendary 
figures and chiselled hieroglyphics to express for 
all time the relationship between himself and these, 
super-heroes. To link himself with gods and god- 
desses satisfied his soaring ambitions. Even to 
be remotely connected with them offered some 
compensatory consolation. The conception of a 
hereafter as a place where all unfulfilled desires 
would be gratified offered the final and supreme 
compensation for earthly thwartings, especially 
the most fearsome of all — death. Thus Primi- 
tive Religions came into being. 

The next steps toward the Creative Arts were 
easily taken. 

Not satisfied with the comforting future that 
early religious concepts promised after death, 
man's inner urges, restlessly craving for more 
tangible and more quickly realized satisfactions 
in this world, supplanted the imitative desires 
by a visible, creative form of expression — a 
compensatory satisfaction— that to-day we 
recognize in all forms of art whether it be music, 



THE INNER SELF AND THE ARTS 173 

sculpture, painting, or writing. Rodin's figures 
afford excellent examples of the commonly 
recognized and universally felt strivings. In 
his "Eternal Spring, " the strength and purity of 
heterosexual passion, proud of its upspringing 
spontaneity, is unmistakably portrayed. 

As the libidinous yearnings are not alike in all 
of us, and as a division of labour and pursuits 
developed alongside of artistic creation, those 
whose urges were the most insistent, those who 
felt most thwarted and repressed, naturally took 
to centring their attention particularly upon 
self-expression. The result was the musician, 
the sculptor, the painter, and the writer. Each 
responded to unconscious cravings, and in the 
works of each lay fashioned in imagery the forms 
of compensation best adapted to his own person- 
ality. 

It may occur to the reader that since all art 
springs from repression all artists must be 
neurotic. Neurotic they undoubtedly are, but 
since their art acts as a safety valve, in that 
through it they can project and substitute their 
complexes, we do not find more artists suffering 
from neuroses than we do artisans, merchants, or 
professional men. By the same token, as Jung 
has stated, every person with a neurosis has 



174 YOUR INNER SELF 

within him potential, but unconscious, artistic 
ability. 

Art is a form of Normal Compensation. The 
psychoanalytic term for such objectifying, such 
translation of thwarted libidinous strivings into 
satisfying pursuits is Sublimation. 

Sublimation is not exactly substitution. Sub- 
stitution may prove a temporarily satisfying 
measure, while sublimation is lasting. The 
woman who, because of thwarted reproductive 
libido, takes up teaching of children may only be 
substituting her inner strivings. Yet, on the 
other hand, such work may really constitute the 
highest form of compensatory activity of which 
she is capable. This, then, would be for her sub- 
limation. The higher the plane of life upon 
which we build, the more spiritualized and soulful 
in their attributes are the results. Sublimation is 
a satisfying of baser, animal cravings by a sort 
of sublime substitution. 

The neurotic, the psychotic, and the artist all 
start with repression of libidinous urges. All 
three also fashion a symbolic world of fancy all 
their own. But here their similarity ceases. 
From this point onward their ways diverge. 
The neurotic seeks shelter in imagery of his own 
devising which he tries to harmonize with the 



THE INNER SELF AND THE ARTS 175 

world about him, but fails to do. He thus re- 
mains asocial and self-centred. The psychotic 
takes refuge in a world peculiar to himself which 
gives comfort and in which he succeeds. But 
this psychotic world is so different and divorced 
from the actual world of reality as to render its 
citizen antisocial. The artist in his imaginings 
may also soar high and create all sorts of fan- 
tastic ideas and visions. Yet never for an 
instant need he lose his hold on reality. He 
may find both shelter and comfort in the 
products of his own imagination, but these are 
based upon strong human contacts. 

The Genius is an artist of the highest type. 
He reaches out and projects in a daring way 
that which has never been done before. His 
sublimation is particularly original and dis- 
tinctive. 

All art then embodies the dreams of the 
human race. It represents the unfulfilled wishes 
common to us all. 

The art-work which the creative artist employs 
in developing his conception differs in structure 
in no important way from the dream-work 
which we study in our individual psychology. 
On this basis Freud has analyzed the inscrutable 
smile of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". 



176 YOUR INNER SELF 

Others have interpreted statuary and books, set- 
ting forth the repressions which their authors sub- 
limated in their works. Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe 
has published most illuminating articles on the 
psychoanalytic explanation of several modern 
dramas* 

On Adler's side-hypothesis of organ inferiority 
we might expect that chronic invalids, because 
of the handicaps they suffer, would be productive 
in art as well as in any occupation calling for 
creative talent. Such, indeed, is often the case. 

In a most interesting little volume, "The 
Privilege of Pain," Mrs. Leo Everett has recently 
compiled a few hundred examples. They range 
from soldiers and sailors, through poets, novel- 
ists, philosophers, mathematicians, statesmen, 
painters and musicians, physicians, inventors, 
historians and men of letters, to Protestant 
reformers and the saints. This author does 
not support her thesis by psychoanalytic doc- 
trines. Nevertheless, I shall quote at random 
several illustrations which it is plain to see 
harmonize with the analytic point of view: 

Alexander the Great, singular even among men of action 
for the splendour of his imagination, was an epileptic. So 
also was Julius Caesar. The latter was often attacked by 
his malady on the very field of battle. 



THE INNER SELF AND THE ARTS 177 

Keats suffered from consumption and it is interesting to 
note that the progress of his disease coincided with the 
expansion of his genius. 

Heinrich Heine, another immortal, spent eight years of 
his agitated, struggling life on what he called "a mattress- 
grave." 

Comte, the French Positive philosopher, accomplished 
the bulk of his work after recovering from an attack of 
insanity during which he threw himself into the Seine. 

The case of Robert Schumann is very curious. He was 
studying to be a pianist, when, in attempting to strengthen 
his fingers, he accidentally paralyzed his right hand. To 
this apparent misfortune we owe one of the greatest com- 
posers. 

Doctor Trudeau, who worked such miracles for the cure 
of consumption, was himself consumptive. 

Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson" is so universally 
familiar that I need only remind you that Doctor Johnson 
was scrofulous and half-blind. 

In these striking personalities we find ego 
libidoes overcoming all obstacles with such suc- 
cess as to leave the marks of their sublimation 
forever engraved in the hearts of men. So 
strong were their urges and so powerful their 
handicaps of disease and infirmity that subli- 
mation really became over-compensation — deeds 
and works forever to be revered. 



Chapter XV 
CONCLUSION 

Psychoanalysis first concerned itself with the 
study of mental disturbances, but we have seen 
in the last chapter as well as in the others dealing 
with matters not strictly pathological how this 
science ramifies. Neuroses, psychoses, and all 
kinds of human behaviour that have anything un- 
usual about them whatever — even the epilepsies 
and criminality — come properly within its pur- 
view; so also do we find this system interpreting 
art and even religious concepts. 

Nor should this comprehensiveness be aston- 
ishing. Psychoanalysis is a reduction to first 
principles of mental functioning; and every con- 
ceivable law, habit, custom, belief, or endeav- 
our that is characteristic of man is the result of 
such brain activity. 

We have also learned that although psycho- 
analysis is a method of treatment for the so- 
called functional nervous disorders, many cases 
which at first would seem to be organic disease, 

178 



CONCLUSION 179 

pure and simple, later turn out to be psychic con- 
versions — i.e.) mental transmutations into physi- 
cal ailments — the cure lying in psychotherapy. 
I shall quote here from Doctor White's "Prin- 
ciples of Mental Hygiene": 

To show the immense practical importance of the 
psychoanalytic point of view I here relist disorders taken 
from the recent literature, which were found to be mental 
in origin although for the most part they were apparently 
physical disorders. I think it will be admitted that many 
or most of these ailments would be apt at least to be 
treated by other than psychological methods. This list 
includes many forms of asthma, sore throat, difficult nasal 
breathing, stammering, headache, neurasthenia, backache, 
tender spine, "weak heart," fainting attacks, exophthal- 
mic goitre, aphonia, spasmodic sneezing, hiccough, rapid 
respiration, hay-fever, gastro-intestinal disturbances (con- 
stipation, diarrhoea, indigestion, colitis, gastric ulcer), 
ptosis of kidney, diabetes, disturbances of urination 
(polyuria, incontinence, precipitancy), menstrual dis- 
orders, auto-intoxication (from long-continued digestive 
disturbances), nutritional disorders of skin, teeth, hair, 
etc., etc. The list might be indefinitely prolonged. 

But never, under any circumstances, should an 
analyst assume that such organic-type cases are 
mental in origin (psychogenic) without first 
using every available means to rule out possible 
physical causes for the disease in question. 

Psychoanalysis has nothing whatever to do 



180 YOUR INNER SELF 

with thought transference, hypnotism, Christian 
Science, New Thought movements, osteopathy, 
chiropractic, or the dozens of other "isms" and 
cults that flourish these days. Psychoanalysis 
does not deny the benefits to be derived from 
medicine and surgery, nor does it attempt to 
commit such an absurdity as treating pneu- 
monia, or typhoid, or any other germ or sus- 
pected germ disease. Psychoanalysis is a branch 
of medical science and works in harmony with 
its precepts. It is not at variance with accepted 
medical doctrine. What makes it seem so 
different from ordinary treatment is primarily 
because it concerns itself largely with neurotic 
manifestations which, up to a comparatively 
few years ago, were improperly understood and 
did not receive the attention from medical 
practitioners that their importance and severity 
demanded. 

The psychoanalyst should, by preference, be 
a physician and, at that, a physician who has 
specialized in nervous and mental diseases 
(neuropsychiatrist), who is versed in normal 
psychology, and who keeps in touch with the 
advances made in general medicine. There are 
psychologists who are not graduates in medicine 
who practise psychoanalysis. In my opinion, 



CONCLUSION 181 

such procedure is to be deprecated unless the 
analysis is carried out under the supervision of a 
neurologist-in-charge, the psychologist acting as 
assistant. To be sure, not all physicians, nor 
neurologists even, are by temperament fitted for 
this type of psychotherapy. Above all, human 
insight is a prerequisite. A personal detach- 
ment, a philosophic bent, a moral character, 
and infinite patience are equally important. 
Lastly, the most efficient analysts are those who 
have themselves been analyzed. 

When a patient is cured by psychoanalysis not 
only are his symptoms removed but he has been 
educated in a way that no other method ap- 
proaches. The landmarks of his life are brought 
forth for consideration and a complete confession 
of the inner self follows. Not only does he 
realize wherein he has erred, what faulty ways 
of thinking and behaviour he has unknowingly 
committed, but he learns as well his strength and 
power, his possibilities for control and for 
achievement. 

One does not have to be neurotic even to 
profit by analysis. Persons have themselves 
analyzed for the self-help it gives them. Busi- 
ness men find that it increases their efficiency. 
Many persons study analysis and read the 



1 82 YOUR INNER SELF 

literature, which is increasing with unusual 
rapidity, just as they would any other timely 
subject. 

Perhaps the reader will find his greater interest 
in applying the principles of psychoanalysis to 
problems other than those properly belonging 
within the limits of abnormal psychology. Per- 
haps a better understanding of himself will be 
sufficient reward for the perusal of these pages. 



SUGGESTED READING 

(For those desiring to pursue the study of Psycho- 
analysis the following books in English are recommended. 
Although this is not claimed to be a definite course of pro- 
gressive reading, thought has been given to the sequence as 
arranged, the more popular expositions being listed first. 
A very comprehensive bibliography, including foreign 
works, pamphlets, and journals, is to be found at the end of 
" Psychoanalysis — Its History, Theory, and Practice," by 
Andre Tridon, published by B. W. Huebsch. 

Freud, S. — "The History of the Psychoanalytic Move- 
ment — Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, 
No. 25," Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing 
Co. 

Coriat, I. H.— " What is Psychoanalysis?" Moffat, Yard & 
Co. 

Low, B. — "Psycho- Analysis; A Brief Account of the 
Freudian Theory," Harcourt, Brace & Co. 



* CONCLUSION 183 

Lay, W. — "Man's Unconscious Conflict," Dodd, Mead 

& Co. 
Holt, E. B.— "The Freudian Wish," Henry Holt & Co. 
Freud, S. — "A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis," 

Boni & Liveright. 
Brill, A. A. — "Psychoanalysis," Saunders & Co. 
White, W. A. — "Mechanisms of Character Formation," 

The Macmillan Co. 
White, W. A.— "Principles of Mental Hygiene," The 

Macmillan Co. 
Jones, E. — "Papers on Psychoanalysis," Wm. Wood & 

Co. 
Freud, S. — "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life," 

The Macmillan Co. 
Freud, S. — "Wit and the Unconscious," Moflfatt, Yard & 

Co. 
Freud, S— "Totem and Taboo," Moffatt, Yard & Co. 
Freud, S. — "Leonardo da Vinci," Moffatt, Yard & Co. 
Freud, S. — "Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory — 

Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, No. 7," 

Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. 
Freud, S. — "Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other 

Psychoses — Nervous and Mental Disease Mono- 
graphs, No. 4," Nervous and Mental Disease 

Publishing Co. 
Frink, H. W. — "Morbid Fears and Compulsions," 

Moffatt, Yard & Co. 
Adler, A. — "Study of Organ Inferiority and its Physical 

Compensation — Nervous and Mental Disease 

Monographs, No. 24," Nervous and Mental Disease 

Publishing Co. 
Jung, C. G. — "The Psychology of the Unconscious," 

Moffatt, Yard & Co. 
JellifFe, S. E. — "The Technique of Psychoanalysis — 



i8 4 YOUR INNER SELF 

Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, No. 26," 
Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. 
Psychoanalytic Review — "A Journal Devoted to an 
Understanding of Human Conduct," Ed. by Drs. 
W. A. White and S. E. Jelliffe, 3617 10th St., 
Washington, D. C. 



GLOSSARY 

Adolescence — The period of growth between childhood 

and adulthood. 
Aerophobia — An abnormal fear of high places. 
Agoraphobia — An abnormal fear of open spaces. 
Ambivalence — The ability to experience opposite feelings 

at the same time, love and hate, joy and sorrow. 
Amnesia — A state of forgetfulness. 
Anxiety neurosis — A nervous disease without organic 

basis (functional) in which a feeling of anxiety is a 

prominent symptom. 
Aphonia — Inability to speak. 
Association fibres — Nerves connecting different parts 

of the brain. 
Auto-eroticism — Pleasure derived from self-gratification. 
Characterology — A scientific study for the purpose of 

understanding various kinds of human conduct. 
Claustrophobia — An abnormal fear of enclosed places. 
Compensation — Satisfaction by means of substitution, or 

sublimation. 
Complex — A repressed idea from the conscious into the 

unconscious. 
Compulsion neurosis — A nervous disease without organic 

basis (functional) in which irresistible desires to 

perform certain acts are prominent symptoms. 
Concussion neurosis — A nervous disease resulting from 

the explosion of a shell but in which no organic 

changes in the nervous system can be found, 

185 



1 86 YOUR INNER SELF 

Condensation — Compression into a small space of time 
or marked abbreviation of a sequence of events 
when applied to dreams. 

Conscious — That part of the mind which we realize 
exists. 

Content — The meaning; what it stands for. 

Defense reaction — A conscious or unconscious pose dis- 
guising or concealing something which the indi- 
vidual is reluctant to have known. 

Dementia Praecox — A psychosis (insanity) beginning in 
adolescence which eventually leads to deteriora- 
tion of mental faculties. 

Disease picture — All the symptoms of a disease con- 
sidered together. 

Displacement — A shifting of emphasis from important 
to unimportant details in a dream. 

Dramatization — A series of happenings made vivid and 
striking so that they hold the attention. Particu- 
larly applied to dream material. 

Electra complex — An exaggerated attachment of a 
daughter for her father. 

Erogenous zone — A place on the skin or mucous mem- 
brane which, if stimulated, gives a pleasurable 
sensation. 

Extroversion — A turning of libidinous desires outwards, 
seeking gratification in the world outside. 

Fixation — An arrest or retardation of libido develop- 
ment. 

Genetic — Relating to origin. 

Heterosexuality — Attraction toward persons of the oppo- 
site sex. 

Homosexuality — Attraction toward persons cf the same 
sex. 



GLOSSARY 187 

Hygiene — The science which deals with the preservation 

of health. 
Hysteria — A nervous disease with marked physical 

symptoms for which there is no organic basis. 
Inadequate personality — Inability to harmonize with 

one's environment. 
Incest — Sexual relationship between persons closely re- 
lated. (Within a family.) 
Individualistic psychology — A scientific study of the 

workings of the mind of a person considered by 

himself and apart from others. 
Inhibition — Self-control; the holding in check of 

emotional impulses. 
Insight — Understanding of one's own mental processes. 
Introversion— A turning of libidinous desires inward, 

seeking their gratification through mental fancies 

of one's own devising. 
Kleptomania — An irresistible impulse to steal. 
Libido — An instinctive striving, wishing, or craving of 

life. 
Localization of function— Discovery that certain parts 

of the brain have certain definite work to per- 
form. 
Malaise — A feeling of sickness. 
Masochism — Pleasure derived from receiving pain from 

a beloved object. 
Masturbation — Artificial stimulation of the sex apparatus 

for purposes of gratification. 
Misophobia — An abnormal fear of dirt or uncleanliness. 
Mongolism — A type of feeble-mindedness in Caucasians, 

in which the face bears a resemblance to the 

Mongolian race. 
Narcism — Gratification from self-admiration. Also 

spelled Narcissism. 



1 88 YOUR INNER SELF 

Neurasthenia — A nervous disease without physical basis 

(functional) in which bodily exhaustion is a 

prominent symptom. 
Neurologist — A specialist in nervous diseases. 
Neurosis — A nervous disease in which no organic basis 

or cause can be found. 
Neurotic — Traits characteristic of a neurosis. 
Objectifying — The gratification of an emotional striving 

by means of some practical work. 
Occipital lobes — The part of the brain which lies at the 

back of the head. 
(Edipus complex — An exaggerated attachment of a son 

for his mother. 
Onanism — Gratification derived from artificial stimu- 
lation of the sex apparatus. 
Ontogenetic — Pertaining to the history of the evolution 

of the individual. 
Organ inferiority — Physical or functional weakness in a 

bodily organ, which directly or indirectly affects 

the psyche. 
Oto-sclerosis — Bony growth in the ear causing deafness. 
Paranoiac — A person suffering from a mental disease 

characterized by ideas of persecution and grandeur. 
Pervert — An individual who practises abnormal sex 

relationship. 
Phobia — An abnormal fear. 
Phylogenetic — Pertaining to the history of the evolution 

of the species or group. 
Pleasure-pain principle — The psychological law which 

holds that pleasure and pain are the primary 

emotions conditioning all conduct. 
Pragmatic — Workable in a practical way. 
Project — To consider as an external reality. 
Propulsive — Creating motion. 



GLOSSARY 189 

Psychasthenia — A nervous disease without physical 
basis (functional) in which mental exhaustion is 
a prominent symptom. 

Psyche — The mind. 

Psychiatry — The science of mental disease. 

Psychic censor — A mental mechanism by means of which 
complexes are prevented from reentering con- 
sciousness. 

Psychogenic — Mental in origin. 

Psychopath — An eccentric, peculiar, and poorly balanced 
person. 

Psychosis — A mental disease (insanity). 

Psychotic — Exhibiting traits indicating a mental disease. 

Reaction time — The number of seconds that elapse be- 
tween the giving of a stimulus word and the re- 
sponse by the subject under examination (applied 
to word-association tests). 

Regression — A return of libido strivings to infantile 
methods of gratification. 

Repression — The forcing of disagreeable ideas from the 
conscious into the unconscious. Same as sup- 
pression. 

Resistance — Interference in the flow of thought so that 
the person hesitates. Also, unconscious hostility. 

Sadism — Pleasure derived from giving pain to a beloved 
object. 

Sublimation — The gratification of primitive emotional 
strivings by means of some idealized kind of 
pursuit. 

Tics — Purposeless muscle-spasms. 

Unconscious — The underneath mind, the workings of 
which we do not realize. 

Word association — The sequence of words that follow 
each other when a person thinks aimlessly. 



INDEX 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Adolescence, 30-33 ; inability to 
develop out of, 33. 

Adulthood, 33-34. 

Ambivalence, 66-67. 

Anxiety neurosis, 141-142 

Art, expression of unfulfilled 
wishes, 175-176; form of 
normal compensation, 172-173. 

Association fibres, 98-99. 

Association method, in crime 
detection, 101-104; in dream 
interpretation, 91, 99. 

Auto-eroticism, 123. 

Compensation, art form of 
normal, 174. 

Complex, defined, 56; effort of, 
to reenter consciousness, 57- 
58; embodied in dreams, 85, 
89-90; lengthened reaction 
time sign of, 104; mechan- 
ism for repressing, 59; Oedi- 
pus, 42-44. 

Compulsion neurosis, 142-143. 

Concussion neurosis, 143-144. 

Condensation, 97. 

Conflict between ego and sex 
libidoes, 133 sqq. 

Confusion, danger signal, 54-55. 

Conscious, the, relation of, to 
the unconscious, 3. 

Consciousness, 3-4; 71. 

Content, latent, of dream, 92; 
manifest, 92. 

Conversion symptoms in Hys- 
teria, 79, 143. 

Criticism of Parents, period of, 
29-30. 

Curiosity, checking of, cause of 
fixations, 38-39, 



Defense reactions, 70-76; basis 
of Adler's theory, 76-77; in 
hysteria, 79. 

Dementia pracox, 32, 61, 153- 

155. 

Development, ontogenetic, 25 ; 
periods: adolescent, 30-33 — 
adult, 33-34; — criticism of 
parents, 29-30— infantile, 22- 
23— over-idealization of par- 
ents, 28-29; phylogenetic, 25. 

Disease, defined, 8, 77. 

Displacement, 97-98. 

Dramatization, 98. 

Dream, the, adult, 87; childish, 
86-87, 92; expression of un- 
fulfilled wish, 84-85 ; histor- 
ical discussion of, 81-83; in- 
terpretation of, 81-82; latent 
content of, 92; literature of, 
83 ; manifest content of, 92 ; 
a safety valve, 85 ; symbols, 
90-92; underlying and pre- 
cipitating causes, 88-90; value 
of, stressed by Freud, 85-86. 

Dream-work, 96; methods of, 
96-98. 

Ego, conflict of, with sexuality, 

133-137. 
Electra myth, 42. 
Erogenous zone, -defined, 119; 

fixations, 124-125. 
Extroversion, 61 ; characterized 

by Sadism, 65-66. 

Fixation, checking curiosity 
cause of, 38-39; erogenous 
zone, 124-125 ; hindrances, 
38-40; helps, 38-40; self- 



193 



194 



INDEX 



pleasure, 123-124; sex, em- 
bodied in non-sexual habits, 
124. 

Foreconscious, defined, 4, n. 

Forgetting, names, etc., 156-161. 

Hero, birth of, myths, 170-171. 

Heterosexuality, 122. 

Homosexuality, 123. 

Hygiene, mental, 154-155. 

Hysteria, anxiety, 141-142; con- 
versions into physical symp- 
toms, 79, 143. 

Images, mental, classified, 6-7. 

Imaginative concepts, compen- 
sation for inferiority, 171. 

Inadequate personality, 153. 

Incest, 43. 

Individual differences, 20-21. 

Infantile period, 22-23. 

Inner self, analysis of, cure for 
dementia pracox, 32; a store- 
house, 4-5, 8. 

Insanity, 145-147. 

Introversion, 61. 

Lapsus linguae , 1 61-163. 

Libidinous urges, crippled by 
fixations, 37; controlled by 
pleasure-pain principle, 48-49, 
54; in lower animals, 51-52; 
origin of, 115; repression of, 
when thwarted, 51. 

Libido, the, 12-13 ; arrested de- 
velopment of, 35-37; Ego or 
Personality, 19-20; expres- 
sion in world of reality, 48; 
normal development of, 35; 
Nutrition, 13-14, 35; Repro- 
ductive, 16-19, 21, 23, 35; 
Self-preservation, 14-16. 

Localization of Function, 5-6. 

Masochism, 64-66. 
Mental Hygiene, 154-155. 
Mongolism, 25. 



Narcism, 123-124. 

Neurasthenia, 144. 

Neurosis, anxiety, 141-142; com- 
pulsion, 142-143; concession, 
143-144; difference between 
psychosis and, 147-149. 

Nutrition libido, 13-14, 35. 

Oedipus fixation (Complex), 
42-45 ; dangers of, 43 ; em- 
phasized, 44; importance of, 
in child-training, 42-43. 

Oedipus myth, 41-42. 

Onanism, 121-122. 

Ontogenetic development, 25. 

Organic defects, compensation 
for, 76-77. 

Organ inferiority, Adler's 
theory of, 76, 116. 

Over-Idealization of Parents, 
period of, 28-29. 

Personality, a composite, 1 ; in- 
adequate, 153 ; relation of, 
and ego, 19-20. 

Phobia, 141 ; 143. 

Phylogenetic development, 25. 

Pleasure-pain principle, 47-49; 
guide for libidinous urges, 
54; confusion in applying, 
sign of breakdown, 54-55. 

Psychasthenia, 144. 

Psychic Censor, 59, 70. 

Psychoanalysis, character-build- 
er, ii, 181-182; interpretation 
of sex development in, 116; 
scope of, 179-180; technique 
of, 84; use of, in interpreting 
psychoses, 154. 

Psychoanalyst, prerequisites of, 
180-181. 

Psychosis, 146-147; compared 
with neurosis, 147-149. 

Reaction, compensatory, 76-77 ; 
defense, 70-76 ; time, 102-104. 
Regression, libidinous, 62-63. 



INDEX 



195 



Religions, primitive, 172 sgq. 

Repression, 51; cause of in- 
troversion, 61-62; in highly 
organized society, 52 ; in 
lower animals, 51-52; in sav- 
ages, 52. 

Reproductive libido, 17-19. 

Resistances, in dream interpre- 
tation, 99-100. 

Sadism, 64-66; characteristic of 

extroverters, 65-66. 
Sex, scope of, 116-117; activities 

of child, 119-121. 
Sex enlightenment, importance 

of, 125-127. 



Sublimation, 80, 174. 
Substitution and sublimation 

compared, 174. 
Superstitions, psychology of, 

166-167. 
Symbols, dream, 90-92. 

Taboo, marriage, 43-44, 53. 

Unconscious, the, 2-4, 68-69 ; 
mechanisms of, 70; primitive 
nature of, 7; a storehouse, 
4-5, 8. 

Wit, 167-168. 



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